Two Psychos
by HardHatShetland
Summary: A Canadian meth lord, and a British-Palestinian assassin. Both ex-military, both like to kill in gruesome fashion, both very unstable. But the latter's been sent to kill the former, over 53 dead Russian gangsters and a famous stolen jewel in Las Venturas. The problem: in this world, murderous psychopaths tend to get along with each other. (Rated M for language and graphic violence)
1. The Bytch Wars

**The Old Venturas Strip Experience, Las Venturas, Clarence County, Robada  
**

**21:34, April 2nd, 2013 (approx. five months before Michael and Trevor's reunion)**

_**The Bytch Wars**_

* * *

The light of the crowded pedestrian mall was inconsistent; constantly changing, thanks to the psychedelic light show being displayed on the giant LED canopy above. Most of the crowd were tourists about to gamble or tourists in the process of gambling, almost all of them unwittingly strolling their way to a penniless and hungover morning.

But there was something different just in front of the famous Silver Ingot casino. There was a clearing, with a pair of dark grey Canis Seminoles flanking a Pegassi Infernus, its windows open, blasting the Dogg Pound's _What Would U Do?_. The Italian supercar clearly belonged to a man of much wealth and little taste; it was black with a red iridescent paint tint, and a striking gold trim.

Perhaps fittingly, this matched the colour scheme of the owner's suit; red suit, black shirt, golden tie and sunglasses. The man was white, with a small black beard, a comb-over, and a slightly chubby figure. He was leaning against his automobile, munching away on some chicken bits from the inside of a Cluckin' Bell bucket. He took one out with his greasy hand and held it to the tough-looking, sharp-dressed fellow with an Assault SMG standing next to him.

"Hey, Leonid, want a cock-piece?" The Infernus owner asked, with a thick Russian accent. The goon to his side shook his head and responded "Nyet."

"Hey, come on man, they're really good!"

"Nyet!"

"Just try one!"

"**Nyet!**"

"I promise, you won't get a heart atta-"

"**Zad Trakhat'sya!**" the goon shouted, punching the side of the nearest Seminole in the process.

The Infernus owner and another, smaller goon standing next to him simply stood and stared at the big one for a minute, partly out of shock, partly out of confusion.

"Okay, Leonid, Jesus... no need to get all fuckin' berserk about it..." the Infernus owner uttered, as he tried to resume his consumption, when the smaller goon spoke up.

"Ya skazal vam, gospodin Bychkov, u nego yest' sindrom Turetta."

"No he fucking doesn't! That's just a stereotype! And for the umpteenth fucking time, we're in America! Speak English, for fuck's sakes!"

"Sorry, Mr. Bytchkov..."

Mr. Bytchkov sighed and wiped his sweaty forehead with his suit sleeve. "Look, I love you guys, all of you, but for the love of God, get into the real America! I must have said this, what, a million fucking times now? Here we are, in Las Venturas, the legendary City With More Love Than It Could Handle, the city of dreams, and riches, and sexy American broads, and Leonid won't even eat a fucking cock-piece?! Are you shitting me?! So what if it's made of processed chicken ass, it's still genuine American cuisine! I bet you, if this was a bucket full of Pirozhki, he'd have gobbled up the whole fucking thing, bucket and all! Oleg, you ever been to a football game?"

The small goon responded "Uh... no, not really..."

"Well, you should! It's a good sport, good fucking sport! A real man's game, not like that prissy, emasculating, ask-questions-first-kick-later Soccer!"

"Mr. Bytchkov, I think America's getting to your head..." the smaller goon said in apparent concern for his boss. Mr. Bytchkov began to munch on another bit of chicken, spewing words out his mouth as he chewed.

"You're damn right America's getting to my head! Actually, you're wrong, it got into my head ever since I hit it big back in LC. I fucking love this country, homie, and so should you!"

"Ahhh... the American Dream has finally arrived! About fuckin' time, huh?"

The three Russians turned their heads away from the entrance to the Silver Ingot, to find the source of this new, old (as in, age), slightly Canadian voice. Standing before them was a grubby-looking middle-aged man with balding hair, a scar on his lip, and a cheap jeans-and-t-shirt combo. He had made an effort to be a little more formal, though, since over the top he was wearing a grey suit jacket that looked like it had been fished out of a dumpster. The man spoke up again, walking over to Mr. Bytchkov confidently, his arms held to his sides.

"All the persecution, the scandals, the corruption, the waterboarding, it's all finally paid off! This is it! This is the end of the line! One Ruskie asshole and his bucket... of **fake chicken! Delicious. Fake. Chicken! Fuckin' America!**" He shouted, pumping his fist in the air with each word. Then the man sniffled and suddenly went quiet and mellow. "It's so beautiful... it almost brings a tear to my eye..."

Mr. Bytchkov simply stood and watched, baffled at how the man was acting. Before he could get too close, Leonid the big goon stepped in from the side and shoved the man away, shouting "Otvali, ty suka! Chertov... der'mo... suka! Der'mo, der'mo!", shaking his head erratically.

"Hey, HEY!" The strange man went, suddenly going into aggressive mode. "I have a very... important... deal with this asshole, Comrade!"

"Hey, hey, hey, come on guys, calm down!" Mr. Bytchkov said, pulling Leonid away from the strange man.

"I AM calm! It's your man who's getting all up in my fucking face!" The strange man exclaimed, gritting his yellowed teeth, with what looked like chunks of crystal meth embedded in between a few.

"You heard him, Leonid, my homie, don't get up in his fucking face! This must be the guy!" Mr. Bytchkov turned his head towards the strange man. "You are Trevor Phillips, right? Of Trevor Phillips Industries?"

The strange man stood back and stood up straight, showing great confidence. "Yyyyyyyyyyep, that's me, alright! And how you bothered to remember my name **before** the meeting, just warms the cockles of my heart so much, it'll catch fire and **burn** this fun fucking financial black hole to the ground! Now give me a hug, huh!" Trevor held his arms out in anticipation.

Mr. Bytchkov duly went in to fulfil his request, being used to getting hugged by his boss, but as he got close, Trevor suddenly formed a pistol with his hand and aimed it at Bytchkov's head.

"**Bang! **Y'been 'purged', Comrade!"

Bytchkov promptly burst out laughing and didn't stop for a whole minute, during which time he clearly had trouble keeping hold of his bucket of chicken. Trevor and both Bytchkov's goons just stared at him in disbelief as to how he could find it that funny.

"Okay, you can stop now, Comrade. Jesus, I'm not a fucking comic. How am I meant to be taken seriously if people are always **laughing**, huh? Like **fucking clowns**!" Trevor went, getting agitated again. Leonid stepped forward again, ready to beat him into the ground on command.

"Aha...ha... okay, okay, I'm sorry, d-don't hurt me... I just couldn't help it... I'm... easily amused, I'll admit..." Bytchkov spluttered out, struggling to consciously regain control of his voice. He finally cleared his throat after about fifteen seconds. "...So, Tr- Mr. Phillips... my name's Ivan Bytchkov, #1 moneylender- _not_ loan shark- of Liberty City, and proud associate of Vitali Rascalov. HE runs the show 'round there. You want a cock-piece?" He asked politely, holding out a bit of chicken to him.

"Fuck your cock-piece." Trevor answered, quite definitively. "Look, Ivan, I just wanna check something here, uh... when you're say you're an 'associate', do you actually mean that, or is it just another way of saying you're either a yes-man who'd suck his boss' cock while letting him shove an umbrella up your ass, and enjoying it, or a completely terrified lackey who'd do the same thing, but out of a desire to... **not**... wake up in the morning scattered across seven different states? Or oblasts, as you Ruskies say?"

"Umm..." Ivan looked at his two goons for assistance, who both shrugged at him. He looked back at Trevor. "Okay, maybe 'associate' isn't the right word. I'm Mr. Rascalov's employee, then."

"Fucking typical. Y'know, every two-bit gangster in this world think they can call themselves an 'associate', even when the only 'associating' they do involves cocksucking and umbrellas! It's dishonesty! Not that I have anything against cocksucking and umbrellas up the ass, of course, but... y'know, I'm just sayin'. They should be more proud of it!"

"Haha, sexual tolerance! I love it! That's true fucking American, right there! You bastards could learn something from this guy!" He said, cheerfully, to his two goons. The cheerfulness was quite obviously forced, though, even for a man who was cheerful on a regular basis anyway.

"Wait a minute..." Trevor stopped to think, and picked up yet another threatening, fiery look on his face. "...Rascalov, huh? I remember him... yeah, I delivered some guns to him in 2007, when he decided he'd keep the dough... the back-stabbing, four-eyed, chipmunk-voiced, tie-loving piece-of-horse-shit Judas! But last I heard, he got shot up the ass in LC! If he's still alive, I swear..."

"Wait, no no no, that's not him, that's not our guy!" Ivan said very quickly to prevent a possible rampage. "You're thinking of Dimitri. Yeah, he's dead, the traitorous asshole. Vitali's his brother. They got separated when Dimitri went to prison back in Russia. Vitali did some stick-up jobs and burglary while he was away, the sort of thing I used to do. They got back together, but Dimitri sold him out to the cops 'cause he thought-"

"Yeah yeah, okay, that's great, Comrade, but don't we have a fucking deal to do here, huh? You know, expansion, business, maybe a penis-shaped present which I'll present to you in that bucket of chicken, if you don't shut up with your fucking history lesson?! Or maybe anyway?! C'mon, let's go!" Trevor reminded Ivan.

"Oh, right, yes! Of course! Leonid, the case."Leonid promptly nodded, obediently opening the door of the Seminole he just punched. Reaching his arm inside, Trevor and Ivan watched expectantly, the latter just barely noticing he had cleaned out his bucket. As Ivan discreetly threw it away, Leonid pulled out a small, shiny suitcase. It had a classic Russian two-headed Eagle symbol on the front, with the Cyrillic words **'****федеральный депозитарий - Североморск****'** written underneath.

"Ooh, it's a... eve-in-a-bin... anus stoppin'... chlamydia-mobile. Great, fucking great! That's exactly what I need! And I ain't being sarcastic, nah... believe me, I've always wanted a chlamydia-mobile. Actually, that's a lie, but It'd make a good birthday present for Johnny K."

Ivan laughed again, thankfully keeping it short this time. "Aha... you're a funny guy, Mr. Phillips! I don't even know who Johnny K is, and I'm still laughing!"

"Yes, you _are_ easily amused, aren't you? Would you laugh if I waved some keys around in your face, and then stuck them in your throat?"

"Heh... probably..." Ivan responded, uneasily, not knowing if he was joking or not. He took the case from Leonid's hands and stepped in close to hand it to Trevor, noticing that he had a tattoo of a dotted line around his neck, with 'CUT HERE' written under it. That didn't help at all.

Trevor snatched the case away from Ivan and quickly pressed the buttons on the top, flicking the locks open. He opened it up, and...

"...Bullshit." He uttered in disbelief.

"Nope, no bullshit here, homeboy. This is just the sweetener. If you agree to work with us, well... this is only the beginning!"

Trevor's eyes had widened by a considerable degree, his mouth agape. He delicately reached his dirty, slightly bloodied hand inside and took out a giant, flawless emerald. It was carved into the shape of a Beaver, with small diamonds as eyes and buck-teeth, and was almost as big as Trevor's head. Ivan stepped in close again.

"Hey, hey, put it back in the fucking case, people will see it!" He whispered, hysterically. Trevor obliged, his businessman side still awake enough to know the risks of just waving it around in public.

"This... this is _the_ fucking Ludendorff Beaver Emerald! How- I...I... what the _fuck_?!" He whispered that last sentence in disbelief. "How did you get this?! I thought this was stolen from that jewelry store in Bullworth, back in 2011!"

"An associate of ours... acquired it some time ago. He was keeping it in Severomorsk, courtesy of the Kremlin. Seriously, you could sell it to some Russian Oligarch, and no-one would give two shits! One shit, even!"

"But... nah. Nah, nah, nah, I don't buy it, not for a fucking second!" Trevor slammed the case shut and held it to his side. "For all I know, that emerald was just a Beaver-shaped piece of shit coated with that fake-ass glossy green paint, and dried-up specks of cum in its eyes! And if this was the real Beaver Emerald, why would you bring it out here, in the middle of the Old Venturas Strip, with, oh, I don't know, _thousands_ of idiots just shambling their way through, looking for something that'll interest their hollow skulls! Also, how do I know that being a two-timing snake doesn't run in the Rascalov blood? 'Cause if it does, I'll be _**drinking**_ that blood tonight, before I feast on your fucking brains!"

Trevor's face reddened with rage again, as he stepped in, looking like he would just bite Ivan's face off at any moment. Leonid stepped in again, shoving him away and shouting "Otvali! Yebat' ... trakhat'sya!" while Oleg pointed an Assault SMG at him.

"Hey, fuck off, Comrade, I still have business!"

"Hey, hey, guys, calm the fuck down!" Ivan pleaded. His two goons did as they were told, resuming their neutral positions, though Leonid still gave a deathly glare to Trevor. Ivan continued. "I assure you, Mr. Phillips, we are not fucking with you, my main man! You know that we trust you! Vitali is not like his brother, he loves his partners! ...Not in a gay way, but you know what I mean, homeboy!"

"Ugh..." Trevor grunted. "I... have not been well lately. Y'know, I've been trying to groom this clown-makeup-wearing asshole as an 'associate' for cocksucking and umbrellas up the ass, that kind of thing. It's been taxing. I can't sleep at night, y'know? I just... stare up, at the shit-stained ceiling, eyes wide open, thinking, feeling, masturbating. And just this morning I was banned from the Visage for trying to shove a poker chip in a blackjack dealer's eye. I saw him broadcasting my cards to the other players, yet I get punished! The fucking cheek!"

"Yeah... them bitches be hating, eh?"

"Precisely! But you must **un-der-stand...** where I'm coming from here! I am here, head of an ever-expanding meth empire, about to make a deal to become the third part of a little 'triangle operation' which I don't fully understand, and that deal requires me to cooperate with a man whose brother royally fucked me over! And just now I've been speaking to a sweaty, chicken-fucking, America-fetishizing moron who expects me to believe that a Beaver-shaped gem that's as big as my kind, loyal heart... just landed in the hands of some mysterious 'associate' who thought it fit to give to me as a 'sweetener' in the middle of a crowded Las Venturas mall! Now, put yourself in my shoes here, just for a moment. Would you just... make the deal and risk getting **fucked** again?! Huh?! Or would you ask some more... questions?"

"Well, we've already seen your credentials, Mr. Phillips-"

"For fuck's sakes, just call me Trevor! And nothing but Trevor!" He shouted, waving his arms in the air as a gesture of annoyance.

"Right, yes, good, I wanted to anyway. Vitali's guys have already seen your establishment, it's really good, really, really fucking good! It's exactly what we need! Those Bikers are too caught up in 'honour' and all that, the Rednecks are too dumb-as-shit to do what we want them to, and the Mexicans... don't get me started. But you're different. Maybe it's because you're from Canada, I hear they have some serious intellectuals up there..."

Ivan stopped talking as he noticed the psychopath in front of him was beginning to twitch slightly, clenching his fists so hard they turned pale from loss of blood circulation. He gulped, quite audibly, as he was getting ready for the moment he'd shit himself.

"Excuse me?" He asked, unnervingly calmly. "I don't think I heard you... Comrade."

"I, uh... I... I said that they have some... serious intellectuals in... Canada."

Trevor stepped in close again, this time much more slowly, baring his teeth like a bloodthirsty cougar. "I only... grew up... in Canada. So close to the fucking border, I may as well not have been! I don't have any special intellectualisms from there. All I have is a faint accent. A faint... fucking accent! It's barely noticeable!"

Leonid lunged in yet again, shoving Trevor away from his terrified boss, this time shouting "Otvali, nestabil'nuyu mat' ublyudok!"

"The fuck did you just say to me?!" Trevor demanded, his face now purple with rage.

Oleg was, again, pointing his gun at Trevor, smirking, smug and confident of the angry Canadian's demise in the event of a psychotic outburst.

"He said, 'fuck off, you unstable motherfucker.'"

"Say that again..." Trevor practically growled out.

"Trevor... please, I'm begging you-" Ivan pleaded, again, stepping back cautiously, to which he was quickly thrown a "Up the fuck shut!" from Trevor. "I want to hear it again. Go on, Comrade, I'm waiting..."

"Fuck off. You. Unstable. Mother. Fucker!"

That did it.

Trevor charged right at Oleg like a rabid bull, headbutting him in the chest and knocking him down to the ground. The bloodthirsty psychopath didn't say anything or even scream, his seething rage had silenced him.

Leonid came up behind him with his gun raised, but Trevor was quick to react with a backhanded swing of the hand still holding the suitcase. It whacked the big goon right in the face, spilling blood and teeth onto the floor. He power-walked over to him and threw the case right on his broken face, knocking him out cold.

As Oleg got back onto his feet, groaning and cursing "Trakhni menya...", Trevor had already taken Leonid's Assault SMG and quickly shot the unconscious goon in the head, splattering his brains all over the floor. The sound of the gunfire duly caused the surrounding crowds (especially those who had stopped to watch the fist-fight, recording it on their smart-phones) to start screaming in panic and flailing away.

Trevor swivelled around and riddled Oleg with hot lead, decorating the side of his Seminole with blood. Oleg screamed for three seconds as his insides were violently rearranged, before the shooting stopped. As his lifeless body slumped against the wall of the SUV, Trevor turned around, looking to annihilate Ivan, but he had disappeared; a small puddle of urine was all that was left where he was standing.

Meanwhile, the Pedestrian Mall, the psychedelic lightshow still illuminating the place, was practically devoid of any... well, pedestrians. The only pedestrians were some armed men wearing a mish-mash of suits, leather jackets and tracksuits, running in from the neighbouring streets, accompanied by a silver Sentinel.

Trevor twitched around in fury as his vision became almost orange-red. He simply walked forward with his 'borrowed' firearm, and began to slaughter Rascalov's goons. Mowing down the first wave of them as they fired pistols and shotguns at him, trailing more blood on the ground. As the Sentinel approached with more goons inside, he fired his weapon into the windscreen, killing every last one of them.

"**Fucking Oligarchs!**" he yelled into the air as he heard the driver's lifeless head lie against the car's horn. "**Yeltsin ain't gonna save ya this time!**"

Another wave of goons showed up and, again, began shooting at him, but to no avail. The psychopath seemed to just shrug of all the bullets that did hit him; he just stood out in the open, butchering all who came near. More Sentinels and Seminoles came in, loaded with Bratki equipped with rifles and grenades, but it was no good, either. Trevor just shot them dead as soon as they stepped out, like the Normandy landings, if the Germans instead had one, seemingly-invincible madman defending the area. And with said madman winning the battle.

"**Call me a motherfucker again, Comrades!**" he screamed again, as he shot up one of the SUVs. He shot it so much, creating so many sparks, that eventually it exploded violently, killing the three goons standing nearby and scattering debris everywhere; one of the doors actually flew over and crushed another goon's head, right next to Trevor.

"**Ubeyte yego! Ubeyte yego! _Ubeyte yego!_**" one goon shouted in desperation, just moments before he was filled with bullets along with the rest of his fellows.

Waves and waves more Bratki arrived, groups of three, four, five, running in from the streets and arriving in more Seminoles and Sentinels, yet none of them came even close to whacking the maniac that was slaughtering them like animals. Trevor continued to taunt-slash-lecture them as he mowed them down; "**I don't care if it's a positive stereotype, it's still a fucking stereotype!**" came from lips as he picked up a dead goon's grenade and chucked it at a black Youga Van full of goons; one of them even tried shooting an RPG at him, but it missed and ended up striking one of the empty Sentinels behind the target, leading to two explosions at once, and a load more dead Bratki.

After a whole five minutes of this mayhem, it was finally over. Trevor shook off his rage, quite literally, the way he twitched about again. Dropping his gun into the street, he surveyed the destruction he had wreaked upon the Old Venturas Strip. Dead bodies lied scattered around the place, their blood spilled and merged with other people's blood to create some kind of macabre sea of blood with guns and bullets floating around, and with the vehicles (eight abandoned, three of them burning wrecks) as islands.

Trevor counted the casualties himself, and deduced he had massacred a grand total of fifty-three Russian gangsters, with no more in sight. Looks like they knew when to quit. He felt proud of himself for this achievement in contemporary killing, and smiled.

He looked back at Ivan's meeting place, Leonid and Oleg still just as dead as they were before the massacre began, the Infernus still there, strangely. It was then he noticed the battered suitcase lying on the floor, Ivan not having thought to pick his oh-so valuable 'sweetener' back up when he fled Trevor's wrath. That was an admission of pulling a con if he had ever seen one.

He picked it back up and opened it the same as before, and just stared at the green, glossy Beaver for a whole minute, contemplating on what to do with the fake.

"...Fuck it! Fuck it, why not?" He said to himself, closing the case and holding it under-arm. "Maybe I could hang this glorified booger on my wall, or eat it for dinner, or shove it up Wade's ass or something..."

The sounds of police sirens filled the air, serving to tell Trevor that perhaps he should get going. He decided to take the fastest vehicle available to maximise his chances, since he was a _smart_ psychopath. He opened up the car's scissor door and chucked the Emerald case into the passenger seat, before sliding himself in and slamming the door down. Luckily for him, Ivan had left the key in the ignition, probably thinking Trevor would be such an easy mark they could go to another fast food restaurant just seconds after they had shoved him away with a worthless replica.

Trevor was not a man of safety, and didn't bother putting on his seatbelt. He just turned the key and sped away, right over the corpses, leaving bloody tire tracks for a bit as he sped erratically out onto the Strip, and towards the desert; towards Trevor Philips country.

As he sped past Caligula's palace, a man wearing a Merryweather Security uniform was walking out the back. He stopped to look at the distinctive supercar flying several times past the local speed limit, eliciting lots of beeps and dangerous near-misses. He was on his phone; nothing special, just an average Badger smart-phone.

"Ivan... I think I just found your car, mate."


	2. End of an Era

**The Lewz Hotel Las Venturas, Las Venturas, Clarence County, Robada**

**22:40, April 2nd, 2013**

_**End of an Era**_

* * *

"**Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck... fuckety-fuck!**" yelled the bald, gaunt-faced, blue-grey plaid suit-without-a-tie-and-some-dark round teashades-wearing Russian man as he sat on his comfy leather sofa, witnessing his eighth consecutive death in a row in his latest deathmatch on _Righteous Slaughter VII. _

**_'JizzleMaNizzle1337 is dominating RussianRouletteWithAClipLoadingPistol' _**read the status, ever-so-humiliating.

"Haha, suck it, commie fag!" yelled a rather squeaky-sounding American boy over the voice chat, celebrating his latest killstreak. "I bet you wish Stalin was here, so you could suck his cock to comfort yourself!"

"**Fuck you**, you stupid piece of donkey shit! You are a fucking hacker! You've just been slaughtering fucking everyone, they've just been going down, down, down, fucking down! Not even a fucking chance to respond!" He shouted down the headset, his voice higher-pitched than you'd expect, as he respawned on the other side of the _enormous_ map he was playing on. Typical middle-eastern desert town fare, by the way.

"You know who else goes down! Your mother, when I went to see her last night!" responded 'JizzleMaNizzle1337'.

"Oooh, now you're in for it, you motherfucking snot-nosed, ear-grating, game-breaking..."

"In case your commie brain is too stupid to understand what I just said, I was implying that your mom gives me a little of the ol' sucky-suck, hahaha!"

"...Aim-botting, pot-smoking, mother-disrespecting, racist, immature prick!"

The Russian squinted his eyes in extreme focus as he slowly, gently eased his character around the map, when he found something that could turn the tides of the battle in his favour.

"Scoped Minigun, American bitch! Now you are T-R-A-K-H-A-L, **fucked!**"

But before he could hunt down his quarry, his character's head suddenly exploded violently, the best of 2013 graphics technology rendering this gruesome death in lifelike detail as bits of bloodied skull and brain spread across the 'screen'. The kill cam came up, and...

**_'JizzleMaNizzle1337 sniped RussianRouletteWithAClipLoadingPistol' _**read the screen, Jizzle's character standing just behind him with a comically oversized and overly-detailed sniper rifle.

"Wha- I- but- how-" the Russian stuttered, unable to comprehend what the hell just happened. Without resorting to more, honestly entirely reasonable, hacking accusations. "You fuck! You motherfucker, you slimy bitch! You fucking teleported, I know it! You don't stop, I'll report your ass! You have to play by the fucking rules! You can pick the game, JizzleMaNizzle, but you can't change the fucking rules!" He ran out of breath at the end, forcing him to stop and pant like a dog, down the headset.

"I can pick the game, huh? How's about this: you and Stalin take turns with each other's asses, and I film it all and post it on the Internet so you can get all ashamed about it and post a hilarious sob story on Lifeinvader!"

"**Fuck you, again!**" The Russian almost bellowed down the microphone. "**You know who the fuck I am?! I am Vitali-fucking-Rascalov! You keep this shit up, and I'll fucking send people over to your house to beat you near to death, and then heal you, and then do it again twelve more fucking times! You'll thinking 2+2=_5_ when they're through!**"

"Face it, commie fag, we're just better. Why'd you think we won the Cold War?"

"**You did not win the-** oh, fuck this, I'm rage-quitting! I won't give you the satisfaction of killing me again with your dirty little tricks, you spoilt little Yankee prick!"

The irate Russian crime lord very quickly kicked the power button on his EXsorbeo 720 to switch it off before 'Jizzle' could have the opportunity to insult his nationality or disrespect his mother again. Or, he meant to. He kicked it a bit too hard and ended up knocking it off the stand beneath the TV, pulling the plug out of the wall. Which had the same effect, but was much more noisy than Vitali would've liked.

"Ya nenavizhu detey!" he muttered to himself as he got up off the comfy sofa and walked over to the kitchen. The presidential suite of the Lewz Hotel almost took up a third of the entire 45th floor. Its floors were polished wood, to fit in with the fancy post-modern style, with lots of sporadic wood panelling on the walls, small, circular lights, beds with tropical flowers and pebbles in them by the door leading into the main lounge where Vitali was just seated, even a small waterfall. Not quite as tasteless as Ivan's matching suit-and-supercar, but still rather gaudy. Then again, you have to be gaudy if you want to be a crime boss in the New Russia.

Vitali stopped momentarily to look out the giant window on one side of the lounge, giving him a miles-wide view of the glittery, tempting, thieving hitchhiker in the desert known as Las Venturas. He noticed quite a few police cars rushing towards the Old Venturas Strip, but his mind was too clouded with video game rage to think about them. What he needed was a drink (and some Meth) to calm his nerves.

He made his way into the kitchen-slash-dining room, quite long and curved a bit along the side of the building, tip-tapping on the reflective black floor. Still grumbling to himself, he took out a bottle of Cherenkov Vodka from the large, flashy fridge and, further displaying he couldn't be arsed with anything right now, just drank it right from the bottle.

Once he had downed about four shot glasses worth of vodka in one go, not even paying attention to the sheer strength of the drink in his throat, he grabbed his glass Meth pipe from the counter nearby and held it above a bunsen burner he kept around for this specific purpose, which stood out by virtue of being chipped and dirty. After a few minutes, the inside of the pipe turned cloudy. He took the cork out the top and slowly inhaled the fumes, savouring the feeling of euphoria that rushed into his brain, clearing his mind of his video game rage.

"Urgh, that's... some fucking good crystal. I should kiss whoever sold tha- oh wait, it was me!" he sort-of boasted to himself, while there was no-one in earshot.

Meanwhile, in the land of chaos...

The front door to the suite burst open, complete with the accompanying 'bang' noise. "Vitali! Vitali, you here?! We really, really need to talk, like, right fucking now!" Ivan Bytchkov's unmistakable voice called out.

"Ivan! Is it entirely necessary? I'm trying to get rid of my video game rage with some quality smoke!"

"Yes, it fucking is entirely necessary!" Ivan nearly-screamed back, quite obviously in a state of panic.

"Bog chert..." Vitali muttered to himself in frustration as he stomped his way into the main room like a drunken elephant; in this case, not drunken, just a bit high. "This better be really, extremely important, Ivan; you know I don't like my smoke-ups getting needlessly interrupted by trivial bullshit..."

In the main room, Ivan was pacing up and down the floor frantically, alternating between clutching his head in panic and waving his arms in panic.

"Vitali! We are in some serious shit, man! Serious, serious shit! Like, we are right up shit creek without a paddle! No, without a boat, in an Olympic swimming pool- nyet, a fucking sea of... murky, runny dog shit- I...I-I I can't even b-begin to describe how much shit we are swimming through right now!"

Vitali managed to keep his cool, casually strolling over his way to Ivan and placing his hand on his shoulder, as he took another puff from his Meth pipe. "Ivan, relax, you crazy bastard. What the hell's going on with you? You should..." he stopped to sniff the air, something not quite fitting of a luxurious hotel suite, even when there's smoking-up going on. He turned his eyes down and noticed a damp patch on the crotch region of Ivan's trousers.

"...Ivan, have you pissed yourself?"

"**Yes, I fucking have!**" Ivan shamelessly admitted. "You'd have pissed yourself too, if you had seen what just happened over at the Old Strip!"

Vitali's eyes widened as he began to pay attention. "...The Old Strip? You were supposed to mark that old Canadian bastard for death just now, weren't you? Give him a replica of a well-known stolen jewel, get the police on his case. Part of our agreement with the Mexicans..."

"Why are you saying all this, Vitali? Have you gone completely fucking loco? This isn't a fucking novel, man!"

"I'm going through the facts in my head... what's his name, what's his name... Trevor Phillips, that was the guy. Did you get him to take the fake?"

"I... I don't have a fucking clue! That doesn't matter right now, but you know what does matter? The fact that he's a fucking psycho! He just... went all '**baaaaaghhh**!' just screaming bloody murder and shit, and he _**killed**_ Leonid and Oleg!"

"**...What.**" Vitali responded, flatly, his face suddenly turning blank.

"A-a-and then, he just... just fucking exploded, like '**pppprrrrrrrkkkk**'!" he went, making a childish 'explosion' gesture "and he just... fucking... _**slaughtered**_ a lot of our men! A fuck-tonne of them! I don't know how many, but it was a fucking **lot of them**! Lo- oh, fuck this, why I am I telling you this when you could just check the news?!"

The panicky middle-aged man grabbed the remote on the glass coffee table, hands shaking with nervousness. After some careful manoeuvring due to the aforementioned shakiness, he switched the mode on the TV (still on after Vitali's rage-quit) to... TV mode. Vitali just stood there, staring blankly at Ivan as he fumbled his way through this process.

Reliably enough, Weazel News was on; a middle-aged female reporter was seen trudging around the perimeter of a bloody crime scene on the Old Venturas Strip. And sure enough, that psychedelic light show was _still_ going.

"...The one responsible for the incident has not yet been identified, as the surveillance cameras surrounding the area appeared to have been disabled under unknown circumstances. However, what is clear is that a total of fifty-three fatalities have been confirmed by police. It appears that all of the men were armed and had recently discharged their equipment, possibly a full frontal assault on the man who- what? The f*bleep* is so funny? I... I didn't even say... what?! No! What kind of sick f*bleep* would associate what I'm saying with-"

...And with that, it was back to the studio.

"...It appears we are experiencing some technical difficulties, so we shall return to the Old Strip massacre as updates come in. In other, completely unrelated news to change the mood, we now discuss the phenomenon in Blaine Country, San Andreas, that locals are calling 'Gay Bees'."

...And with that, the TV was switched off. Ivan wasn't really paying attention the whole time, he was too busy frantically pacing up and down the room still. It was Vitali who switched it off, his face still completely blank.

"Y'see what I mean now? Trevor is going to be the fucking death of us! We have to... to go to church a-and confess all our sins, a-a-and convert to Catholicism... n-not necessarily in that order!" Ivan fearfully and thoughtlessly rambled off. Vitali, still processing this unusual event, managed to walk over to him and grab him by the shoulders in a typically masculine display of reassurance, his face now showing a bit more emotion than before.

"Ivan! ..._Vanya! _You need... to calm... down! Just explain, carefully, why did this happen? And why will it be the death of us?"

"Fuck calm! This is not the time for calm!" Ivan squealed, flailing his way free of Vitali's hold. "I don't know what happened, it's just... one minute it's all good, I-I mean, he did act a little creepy, and got really close to my face... and he had a dotted line on his neck with 'CUT HERE' written under it... and he asked if I'd find it funny if he stuck a key in my throat and I wasn't sure if he was joking or not... but other than that, he seemed like an okay guy. But then he started getting all suspicious, somehow he was on to us! And then I just offhandedly mentioned his nationality, you know, something you'd expect, something minor, and then before I knew it, the shit broke loose, all hell hit the fan... and why will he be the death of us? I don't fucking know, that's the scary thing about it! He's a fucking unpredictable psychopath! I wouldn't be half-surprised if he just burst in right now, and broke our legs, and ripped off our pants, and jerked us off into a bucket for his own... sick... twisted amusement!"

It was then, at the worst possible moment, someone began to slowly turn the door handle on the front door. This caused Ivan to jump, nearly to the point of having a heart attack, and climb over the sofa, hiding behind it like a little boy who just saw a ghost. "Oh, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me! Not literally, that's exactly what I don't want! Don't let him molest me, Vitali! What would my ex-wife think?!"

Vitali simply sighed and reached over the sofa, grabbing the nervous wreck of an employee by the arm and trying to pull him up. "Come on, get out from there, you idiot. You really need some of this Meth. Look, we personally don't need to worry about Mr. Phillips; if he knew it was a fake, that's the end of it, it's not like he'd be stupid enough to come after us just for trying to con him. If we had fooled him, maybe, because he'd be ashamed of it; but he wasn't fooled, so he can't be ashamed! Besides, the Mexicans will deal with him soon enough. You know this."

"Why the fuck didn't we just kill him in the first place? You have a fucking ex-SAS assassin on your payroll! If he could single-handedly hand your partners in Europe the North of England's black market on a bloody platter, surely he can-"

"Mr. Rascalov." uttered a new voice from the now-open door, drawing all eyes to the latest figure to join them.

There stood a man of above-average height and above-average muscular build. He appeared to be of Arab ethnicity; he had lightly tanned skin, and a rather large, arching nose. His black hair was in a side parting that seemed to wave about somewhat, and he had a well-groomed beard surrounding his mouth, connected to his hair. His attire was a 'requisitioned' Merryweather Security uniform, but he had the marks of a rich criminal about him; the golden watch on his left wrist and the similarly golden chains on his neck. He also had a trippy-looking tattoo of a Komodo Dragon with some thorny branches and flowers coming out of it around his right arm. His expression was, much like Vitali's earlier, completely deadpan; though his eyes did seem to be squinting more than they should.

"Ah... Tobias." Vitali spoke up, in response to his appearance. "I was wondering where you've been."

"I was takin' care of that problem the General wanted takin' care of. Got shot. The usual business." Tobias answered his concerns, displaying a slightly dissonant East London accent. Nothing close to 'Mockney', but still there.

"Ah yes, the 'problem'. Bit of a stupid question, this, but you _did_ kill him, didn't you?" Vitali asked, sounding like he'd completely forgotten about Ivan's predicament. Of course, he hadn't. He knew from past experience to never forget a man's predicament, not since he was screwed over by his own flesh and blood. But he did like to put his priorities in order... sometimes they were a bit skewed.

"O' course." Tobias duly answered. "I got a bit o' brain left on my sledgehammer, if you wanna run a DNA test."

"Nah, I think we're good. It's not my problem, anyway. You'd better go talk to Kimbali. I think he's drunk in my room right now, doing fuck-knows-what."

Ivan poked his head up from behind the sofa, to afford Tobias the courtesy of a greeting. Unfortunately, he was too shaken up to say anything, and just watched as he walked, silently, into the kitchen.

"Kill... kill who?" He asked, nervously again. "Did he kill Trevor?"

"Don't be a fool, why would we want to kill him?

"You still haven't answered my fucking question, man! My original question, that is! As in, why the fuck didn't we just kill him!"

"Because, unlike my asshole brother, I like to be discreet when I can. You remember our deal with the Aztecas? They specifically said they wanted him out of business, not dead. I figure we give him the replica under the pretence of convincing him to join our highly lucrative triangle scheme, then we anonymously sell him out to the FIB. They've been searching for the Beaver Emerald for two years, Ivan. They practically lost it without a trace after the Bullworth Heist; it was one of the FIB's biggest failures. They'd go at him like rabid wolves. Of course, they'd have found out it was a replica, but he _**is**_ also a meth producer and known psychopathic murderer.. which, apparently isn't enough on its own, but whatever. Trevor gets put away for life, the FIB get their glory... sort of, the Aztecas take over the drug trade, we get our third part of the triangle, everybody goes home a winner. Well, except Trevor, obviously."

"Yes, and it worked so fucking well in practice, didn't it? This massacre, this slaughter, it's like... the... the exact opposite of discreet! I love you, man, but I seriously think Zinny might be right about you sometimes!"

"Will you calm the fuck down, man? And stop listening to my crazy cousin, she's too much like Dimitri." He paused for a moment to reflect on the massive screw-up he had just created, sighing, resigning himself to Ivan's criticisms. He at least respected the moneylender enough to listen to what he had to say (after all, he probably wouldn't have gotten to where he is without Mr. Bytchkov's economic know-how), which is more than could be said for most of his associates. "Okay, I admit, this plan was maybe a little too complicated. I admit, in hindsight, maybe we should have just killed him. But I don't like to kill people, you know that. It's barbaric."

"Then what was that business with Tobias killing someone for you just then, eh?"

"Tobias was acting under General Kimbali, I had nothing to do with that."

"And who the hell did he kill, anyway?"

Vitali took another quick puff of his Meth pipe, hoping to clear out his _extremely_ repressed thoughts regarding the post-April-Fools' massacre on the Old Strip. "Tommy Vangelico, some old has-been Vice City cocaine lord-turned-Jewelry store chain guy. I think he got back into the business, financed some of Kimbali's rivals back in Africa... or something. Tough shit."

* * *

**1 hour earlier...**

**Vangelico Villa, Prickle Pine, Las Venturas, Clarence County, Robada**

**21:41, 2nd April, 2013**

* * *

"It's just... somewhere, somewhere along the line, in my life, I screwed up. I screwed up big time." The sharp-dressed, sixty-two-year-old Italian-American lamented to himself, as he poured himself another shot of whiskey. "I don't know what I'm gonna do, Phil... what the hell was I thinking?! I have my jewelry store, why the hell did I think of getting in cahoots with African war criminals... this Congolese guy, General Kimbali, he wants me dead. A lot of people have wanted me dead over the years, y'know... all that business back in Vice City, with the cartels and the mafia, all those guys, but this is different. Don't ask me why, it just... is. Besides, I'm not the murderous prick I used to be..."

The man downed his whiskey, shaking his unwashed, sweaty head. He'd normally look quite high-class, but at this point of the night, and his life, it'd be quite difficult to miss his bloodshot eyes and hoarse voice; signs of Cocaine abuse. Slumped on the sofa behind him was a somewhat overweight old man with only one arm, extremely drunk. "But... nah, man, you... yous still a killer, Tommy... you can take them African bastards, no problems..." he slurred.

"Yeah, well... you would say that, wouldn't you, Phil?" Tommy Vangelico depressingly replied. "I mean, you're the only friend I have left... from my glory days, at least. Before all those Meth-pushing pricks came into Vice and screwed up everything. Meth is bullshit, anyway. It's fake, chemical bullshit." He downed another whiskey to filter out his sorrows, but to no avail. "Heh... I guess I never truly got over it, did I? I'll never get over it... those were the best days of my life. I felt like I could take on anything, like I was the goddamn king; especially after I finally took out those two traitorous assholes. I could've gotten out of this mess back then... hell, this must be why I even thought about getting back in the game. There's no other explanation. But now, I'm an old, saggy-ass jewelry salesman with a fake name."

"Jeshus man, you... you should cheer up... you've been goin' on and on about this for hours, it'sh... unhealthy. Hey, hey, let'sh go shoot some some bastards that wanna kill ya! You and me! It'sh been... too long since I..."

"Forget it, Phil, there's no point. There comes a time in every wiseguy's life when he has to admit he's lost the game. This is that time. You want my advice, I say get the hell away from me while you still have legs to do so with. You still have that gunrunning business going for you."

"Hey, hey, maybe I could reashon with this... Jenny Kimberly ash-hole! I could make a deal with him! Yeah, I have connectionsh in Africa, all I need to do ish... ish... shit, let me think..."

"Thinking while drunk? You remember what happened when you tried to do that back in the 80s? You really should sober up before thinking of anything, man."

Tommy, still only half-awake, looked like he was going to collapse as he crouched down to rummage through the cabinet he standing in front of. But it was while rummaging that he began to panic, frantically rummaging some more, knocking down bottles and glasses.

"Shit... shit! Where's my Coke, where's my goddamn Coke?! If I don't get it, I might just kill myself!"

Phil was too drunk to care about what was going on there, instead he simply fidgeted about in his seat. After about two minutes of frantic and loud rummaging, Tommy abruptly stopped and clutched his head, rising slowly up to standing position again. He sighed, trying to psyche himself up.

"Alright... calm down... you can't have Coke anymore... you don't want it... it clouds your judgement... that's it, that's why I ended up messing with African warlords, it's the goddamn Coke! ...Agghhh! I should've sent myself to rehab long ago, just like I did with Ken. Screw me, I never did get to apologise to him..."

It was at this point that fate responded to the temptations the aging ex-Coke lord had offered it.

The sound of clonk-clonking boots on the tiled floor filled the entrance hall connected to the lounge, but Tommy didn't take any notice of it, too busy drowning in his own melancholy to care about anything. And of course, Phil was too drunk to notice.

Soon, a man appeared in the hall, just beyond the threshold leading into the lounge. It was Tobias, Rascalov and Kimbali's brute. He was wearing the requisitioned Merryweather uniform; a custom Heavy Pistol in one hand, and a sledgehammer in the other.

Tommy finally decided to take notice of this unexpected visitor, thinking he was one of his guards. He turned around and exasperatedly said "What do you want, huh? I didn't call for any one of you mercenary pricks. Get your ass outside, will you? I'm too busy dealing with issues in here."

"I'm your issue, Mr. Vangelico." Tobias responded, with a tinge of smugness about him. Less than a second later, he raised his Heavy Pistol up to Phil's head and pulled the trigger propelling a bullet into his skull, shattering it and spraying blood out of his eye sockets. Before Phil had even slumped down dead, Tobias had already moved his aim over to Tommy with almost robotic motion, and shot two more bullets into his knees; one for each. More blood was sprayed onto the floor as he fell down, clutching his wounds in agony.

"Aaauueerghhh... you stupid prick! You're Kimbali's man, aren't you?! I knew you'd come sooner or later..." he stopped in his little rant to cough up blood. "Ugh... I've been waiting... for the past seven weeks! What took you so... fucking long!? Eh? Some 'assassin' you are, prick!"

Tobias just stared back.

"You are one creepy bastard... I bet you think you're a real badass... well, you're fucking not! Congratulations, you're about to murder a sixty-two year old man, and you killed my best friend Phil, who never did anything to your psycho war criminal boss! He was going to make a deal with him, until you came and fucked that up, ha! You fucking idiot!"

Tobias' next response was to holster his gun. His expression still only subtly happy, he walked forward and begun to spin his sledgehammer around in his hand.

"So, this is it, huh? The end of the line? Too bad, I've already... lived a _very_ fulfilling life. I _**ruled**_ Vice City! I whacked... every... last... motherfucker... the eighties threw at me! And I made a shitload of money in the process! They'll all be **worshipping** me in hell! And nobody, not you, not Kimbali, not Ancelotti, not Madrazo, **nobody can take that away from me!** ...C'mon, what are you waiting for?! **Do it, you thuggish prick! Or are you a fucking coward?!**"

Tobias didn't hesitate. As soon as he was accused of cowardice, he raised his hammer overhead and brought it down on Tommy's head, with all its force. The forceful impact of the huge, iron head cracked Tommy's skull and bashed his face against the floor, breaking his nose with a sickening snap. Blood began to trickle out of his nostrils and out of his hair, where his skull had cracked. Tobias waited for a moment, taking in Tommy's pain as he coughed up more blood and some teeth.

"_**Finish it!**_" Tommy screamed, his voice muffled by all the blood flooding down his throat.

Tobias wasn't that merciful, though. He stood and watched some more, savouring the agony, spinning his hammer again. After a while, he decided it was time to complete his job. He lightly tapped the hammer's head against Tommy's to determine the best place to shatter the skull completely, eventually noticing a groove he had created. Once again, he raised the sledgehammer and brought it down on Tommy's broken old cranium.

This swing did the job. An even more sickening popping and crunching sound was made as he caved in Tommy's head, spreading all his precious memories of his glory days in Vice City all over the tiled floor, leaving a colossal pool of blood. By any objective standard, he was now dead, as he had stopped breathing and his brain was in pieces. But just to be on the safe side, Tobias smashed Tommy's head in again, this time almost flattening the whole thing, turning it into a mangled, unrecognisable mess.

The deed was done. Tommy 'Vangelico' was no more. Tobias celebrated by walking over to Phil's corpse, much cleaner than Tommy's, and wiping his bloodied sledgehammer on the dead drunkard's suit. As he did this, he took out his Badger cellphone from his pocket and went to his contacts, finding one known only as 'General JCK'. Twelve seconds passed after he had auto-dialed, until finally a response was heard.

"Eh... this... this number's unavailable, please leave a message at the door, along with the bag of shit..." a slurred, distinctly African voice responded.

"General, mate, it's Tobias. Tommy Vangelico's dead."

"Oh, yeah, him! Fuck him! Fuck him and his fucking fucked-up rings! There's rings everywhere, man, too fucking many. And his... are shit. Shitty rocks. That's what diamonds are, really, shitty shiny rocks... yet they're so valuable, I regularly kill people for them. The world, it is fucked up! Um, anyway, uh... you'd better come over to your man Vitali's place for your squids, I've been drinking this Western colonial alcohol and it's... well, it's no fucking wonder!..."

"Will do."

"I shall be seeing... you... and... oh what is... you! You! Stop! Stop it! Stop eating my sesame cake, I fucking kill you!"

With that, the General hung up on him. Tobias didn't really react to that, having met any strangers and freaks in his time. A drunken African warlord was probably quite low on his personal scale of noteworthy strangeness.

Suddenly, Tobias felt a strong pain in his right leg, coinciding with a very gunshot-like sound. He looked down to see a bloody patch on his trousers, just above his right stolen Merryweather standard-issue boot. The pain made him instinctively 'slide' his way behind one of the armchairs in the room, keeping his injured leg straight in order to avoid further pain and thus interference in his mission.

"Shit, Tommy's dead! You fuck, he was supposed to pay me next week!" shouted a gruff voice from across the threshold, into the hall. It was one of Tommy's Merryweather guards with a Carbine Rifle. Tobias was baffled. He could've sworn he killed them all before coming in. Or perhaps he was on his break during that time. Assassination missions tend to have niggly little complications like that. He was just glad this complication came into play _after_ Tommy had been dealt with.

As the guard began shooting at the armchair, making fluff fly, Tobias returned his courtesy by breaking out his pistol, ducking down low and firing blind, below his belt, as it were. Tobias is known for, amongst many other things, having a trigger finger on Speed. He fired off about seven shots in the space of five seconds, and with that many at that speed, the law of averages prevailed. Just like Tommy, the guard fell down and began clutching his injured legs. The assassin grabbed the side of the ruined armchair and used his upper body strength to pull himself to his feet, before doing what you'd expect; limping over to the downed guard and popping a bullet into his head, staining the floor even more. Whoever bought this house next would have to have top-class cleaning personnel.

Tobias proceeded to the nearest bathroom, stopping at a cabinet on the way to 'borrow' Tommy's car keys, and wrapped one of Tommy's gaudy-looking golden towels around his injury; after all, he wouldn't be needing it anymore. While he was busying himself with this, he heard the distinctive sound of police sirens in the air, serving, as ever, as a convenient reminder to get going. The only person who could've called the police was the guard he just killed, demonstrating the importance of maintaining a zero-witness policy, at all times. No Man Left Behind, Tobias called it, in a twisted alternate interpretation of the USMC mantra.

He climbed his way out of the window, landing himself in Tommy's front yard, which Tobias had earlier took the liberty of redecorating with some Merryweather guards, complete with .50 caliber bullets lodged in their heads. He could see the red-and-blue lights flashing further down the street of the affluent Prickle Pine district of Las Venturas, prompting him to limp a bit faster down the paved path, past the imitation tropical plants and to the driveway. There, he found his way out; a white Albany Alpha, presumably another investment that Tommy wouldn't be needing anymore. As he unlocked the door remotely, he couldn't help but notice the vanity plate: 'V1C3K1NG'.

As the LVPD Police Interceptor approached the house, he started the car and sped away from the drive, drifting to the side as he drove onto the Prickle Pine street, tires smoking. While the police in the country are notorious for their obliviousness to the existence of speed limits and road safety laws, they were smart enough to put two and two together and deduce that the man fleeing the house with dead bodies in front of it was probably quite suspicious.

As the cops gave chase down the suburban sprawl of North Las Venturas, Tobias decided on a rather unusual method of shaking them off. He didn't have much trouble rummaging through his other pocket while at the wheel, at almost one hundred miles an hour, since the streets were mostly empty at this time of night; the residents at home and the tourists restricted to the Strip, for the most part.

He took out a small, unmarked medicine bottle (or it used to be marked, until the label was ripped off), popped it open and emptied out a bright yellow, star-shaped tablet onto his lap. The rest of the tablets in the bottle were similarly brightly coloured and eccentrically shaped, with others including pink hearts, green shamrocks, purple flowers, blue dolphins, and red hammer-and-sickles.

Tobias popped the lid back on and inserted it back into his pocket, to ensure he didn't lose it; it was extremely important to him, you understand. He quickly placed the star tablet into his mouth and began to crunching away on it, sucking up the liquid that came out. Then he just... sat back, and relaxed. Tried to pretend he wasn't even being chased by the cops, just going on a relaxing drive through North Las Venturas, speeding at over one hundred. Most people in the illegitimate professions did it, it was normal.

Soon enough, his perception of these events began to change. He looked in the car's wing mirror and watched as the red and blue lights of the police car behind him merged together to form a single purple light, and the sirens starting getting high-pitched and started and stopped erratically, almost in musical fashion. As he focused back on the road, he noticed that all the parked cars appeared much brighter and striking, while the surroundings appeared much darker to compensate, and streaks of light were following around his... well, Tommy's car, appearing both in front and behind him. Everything that moved did so with a trippy blur. Appropriate, since he _was_ tripping by this point.

He was relaxed and at peace with himself, for he had just killed one of his targets, and that was good enough context to make a good trip. That's the kind of man he is. He decided to casually follow the streaks of light in front of his car... though he noticed the car had turned red, and the steering wheel began to feel a bit like an actual wheel, complete with tires. It felt smooth and rubbery, like it had just been rolled out the tire factory. It probably represented something, but it was of little concern to him. As he turned around a corner, the road became much wider, for real. Not so real were the lines on the road beginning to wave and slalom around a little, and the car's engine becoming a lot quieter and higher-pitched, almost angelic-sounding.

It was while he was tripping, almost completely dissociated from his getaway and his injury, that he thought about his role later in life. He knew he was a killer, still does. He thought of himself as an exemplar, in his own interpretation of the world. But he never met anyone else like him. Everyone else tended to follow social rules and norms; even if they were a killer inside, they refused to express it. Not Tobias. But who else, he thought? Surely there'd be someone else on the same plane of thought as him. They could change the world, he thought. Doesn't matter if it's for better or worse, the important thing is that there'd be change, he thought some more.

While he was deep in thought, he noticed a large mass of purple lights behind him, fading away, as he drove into some kind of alleyway. The world began to slow down around him, as more streaks of light began to appear from all around, surrounding and blinding him, but at the same time, creating intense feelings of euphoria. You could even say it tickled him somewhat. Quite soon, the blinding white turned to black.

It was then he heard his phone ringing, echoing for miles, even though he was outside, in a city. It was like this for about... well, he had lost track of time in the middle of his trip, but by an objective standard, it had been about ten seconds for him. Then he woke up, back in reality proper.

He lifted his face up from the steering wheel of the Alpha, and noticed he was on a concrete lot behind what looked like some kind of industrial building. But then he looked over to his right and saw the bright lights of the Las Venturas Strip. Of course, he had heard about how some of the Casinos looked a bit industrial around back. He slowly hauled his way out of the car, the door already open for some reason, and limped over to the front of the car. It was quite visibly damaged, but only dented, against a dumpster. The dumpster had some severe scratch marks on the bottom, which aligned quite well with the scratch marks on the ground. Evidently, he had been transporting a dumpster across the backlots of the Strip and he didn't even notice. Or he did, but he certainly couldn't remember.

The phone was still going the whole time he was doing this, but it took him that long to properly register it. Finally he took it out of his pocket and noticed that his friend Mr. Ivan Bytchkov was calling him.

"'Ello?" He said, finally answering the call.

"Tobias! What the fuck have you been doing? I've been trying to call you for the last ten minutes! I thought that psycho might have gotten you, too!"

"Nah, mate, I was just tripping. You know the setup."

"Seriously man, you need to take a break from that shit for a while. You make one wrong move with Acid, and you'll be surrounded by bloodsucking lizards! I learned that the hard way... anyway, look, this is not the time! We are in serious, serious shit! Triple, no, quintuple serious! Hextuple, sentuple, octuple, like... fucking infinite amount of seriousness!"

"Getting your knickers in a twist as always."

"Screw you, man! That creepy old Canadian bastard I was supposed to mark for death, Trevor Phillips, he... well, I don't have time to explain, but the bottom line is, there's a lot of fucking dead bodies over at the Old Venturas Strip! And I've probably pissed out the vodka I drank on my eighteenth birthday! Trevor's gone, thank fuck, but he stole my fucking car, just to rub the salt in my great, gaping emotional wounds! I'm hiding in the Silver Ingot casino, you need to pick me up and bring me to Vitali so we can fix this... whatever!"

"Alright, I'll come get you, but I've been shot, so we'll need to get medical attention on the way."

"Medical atte- I-I mean, yes, okay, sure! I think there's a surgeon Zinny knows, has an office near the train depot..."

As Ivan was discussing Tobias' medical arrangements, Tobias walked ahead to get some fresh air, get back in the flow of reality. But then he noticed something both unmistakeably real and unmistakeably suspicious. As he stood watching the bustle of the Strip, he saw Ivan's very distinctive red-black and gold Infernus blasting past, creating chaos by forcing cars over to the side of the road, some crashing into other cars and spinning about.

Meanwhile, Ivan was still arranging things, as he was apt to do. "...And as far as I'm aware, this doctor can also provide medication to stop you urinating, which would come in real fucking handy right now..."

"Ivan... Ivan!" Tobias interrupted him.

"What is it now?!"

"Ivan... I think I just found your car, mate."


	3. Switcheroo

**The Lewz Hotel Las Venturas, Las Venturas, Clarence County, Robada**

**22:46, April 2nd, 2013**

_**Switcheroo**_

* * *

"...And you're just fine with _him_ going around murdering his enemies, all efficient-like?! You fucking hypocrite!" A Russian female voice exclaimed from the other side of the Lewz presidential suite's lounge. Once again, Vitali and Ivan's attentions were drawn to her; they were both on edge after this latest revelation, and had to be alert, as much as Vitali would hate to admit it.

"Zinny!" Ivan responded to her arrival, with a mixture of relief and sheer terror.

"Cousin?" Vitali responded to her arrival, with a mixture of relief and sheer annoyance. "Please, don't start now, of all times..."

"I _**will**_ start now! I start when I want! It's called democracy, look it up! It's very fucking popular here in America!" responded Vitali's lady cousin, 'Zinny'. She looked quite athletic but was still rather slim, and looked to be in her mid-thirties, younger than her cousin. Her eyebrows seemed permanently frowning in anger, just above her glasses and below her platinum blonde bob cut. She wore a dark green buttoned shirt, some billowing black trousers and flat shoes, marking her out as a practical woman.

Ivan looked as if he was about to enthusiastically shout out the greatness of American democracy, but managed to stop himself; it was not appropriate at all for their current situation.

"Cousin, I'm getting bored of this bullshit..." Vitali tried to stop her lecture, exasperated, but his plea was ignored.

"...I don't get it, Vitali! Your African war criminal friend can send off your own personal attack dog to kill a defenceless old man, not to mention commit human rights abuses up the ass in the Congo, and you don't give a shit, yet when push comes to shove for you, you always pussy out for no good reason! That's the real bullshit!"

"It's called ethics, cousin, it's very popular... all over the world, really." Vitali retorted, trying to turn around his cousin's sarcastic remark on her.

"_Ethics_?! Da, that's really fucking cute, coming from you, Mr. let's-go-all-the-way-to-America-to-kill-my-Brother-who-chose-Mikhail-Faustin-over-poor-old-unreliable-me!" Zinny continued her rant, to which her cousin could only sigh and rub his forehead. "After that yokel killed your brother, you took over his business by force, didn't you? You killed asshole Kenny Petrovic and took over _his_ business, too, didn't you? Why can't you do that now?!"

"Blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah..." Vitali repeated to express his annoyance as his cousin continued.

"Instead you're all 'oh sure, I'd deal drugs and guns and Coltan and stolen jewels and prostitutes and counterfeit Jeans and TVs and bootleg Chiapas sauce, but I don't want to _kill_ people, nooooo, I'm a _good_ fucking crime boss!' Instead, when you're not sitting on your ass and smoking Meth, you're swearing at video games and jacking off to Furry porn!"

"How many times, cousin, it's not 'porn' if there's no fucking..."

"Face up to the fucking facts, cousin, you've gone soft! Softer than the late Lenny Petrovic's erect cock! What the fuck happened to you over the past five years?! Did you join a Buddhist monastery without telling me?!"

At last, Vitali's patience had been worn thin. He stood up and demanded "**For fuck's sakes, why do you care so much, Zinaida!? You're not the one running this show!**"

"Because I'm your fucking flesh and blood! With Dimitri gone, I'm all you have left! It's my duty to ensure you don't fuck up the Rascalov name, and let me tell you, you're doing a very shitty job! Say what you want about Dimitri, but at least he knew how to get shit done!"

"**Fuck Dimitri**!" He yelled, aggressively pointing at his cousin to emphasize his point. "Fuck him straight to the tenth circle of hell and back! He was a fucking traitor and a royal asshole! I know you love him so huggy-duggy much, but that's because he took _you_ with him to LC! You weren't the one he left to rot in a Solntsevo jail cell because of being 'too unpredictable' for that other asshole Faustin! And then what, he decides to betray _him_, too, so what was the fucking point, huh?! It's a real fucking shame, I never did get to thank that 'yokel' for wiping the shit-stain off the face of the Earth!"

"I don't love him, I never did. I always he knew he was a traitor. But when he wasn't betraying people, when he was 'playing by the rules', as he loved to say, he actually did fucking did stuff! You know, he was proactive! You kinda have to be proactive if you want to get anywhere in life, legal, illegal, or anything in between! Oh, and by the way, Dimitri wouldn't have had to have the yokel kill Faustin if he wasn't such an unstable psycho who got my impotent ex murdered!"

"When will it stop, Zinaida? When will you stop defending the little fuck!? Actually, no, this isn't about Dimitri, this is about Jaroslavich! The only reason you care so much about how I do my job is because you want his dick inside you!"

Zinny leaned in towards her cousin."You take that back, you misogynist prick!" She quietly demanded.

Ivan, who had been trying and failing to keep his cool by the sofa, finally snapped again.

"**Guys, please, just shut the fuck up! This is not the time for arguing! We have a fucking psycho killer on our asses and you two are bickering like children!**"

Zinny pulled away from her cousin and breathed in, attempting to regain her composure. "Y'know what, Ivan... you're right. But before we do anything else, I want my cousin to apologise for saying that. That's all I ask."

"Me?! You started this bullshit!" Vitali spat out.

"I said, _**'that's all I ask'**_!" Zinny reaffirmed, giving her cousin the evil eyes, as it were.

Vitali shuffled about for a few moments, his annoyance affecting his motor functions. Finally he threw his arms up in the air in defeat. "Ladno! Ladno... Zinaida, mne ochen zhal." He apologised, softening his tone towards the end.

"Spasibo, kuzen. Byl eto tak trudno? Now, let's discuss how we're going to fix this Canadian maniac problem. I already heard everything Ivan said. We have to make an example of this asshole."

"No... we don't." Vitali asserted, stubbornly.

Naturally, this got Zinny all worked up again. "Bozhe moy, you know, that is so fucking typical of you! Vitali, this guy has murdered fifty-three of your best men! We can't just let him get away with that shit!"

Vitali responded with a sigh. "This is one of the problems of the black market business nowadays, this revenge culture. I had assumed the civilised world had abandoned it back when we invented the fucking steam engine, but apparently not. Well, screw that. I am a _modern_ Vor v zakone, I realise that by taking our revenge, we will be no better than him."

"God help us if _you're_ a prime example of a 'modern' Vor v zakone..." Zinny covertly muttered to herself.

"S-s-so what do we do? You're not seriously suggesting we just sit back and do nothing, are you?!" Ivan cut in, still as concerned as ever.

"Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting." Vitali bluntly answered. "He thinks we were just some opportunistic hustlers. He doesn't know anything about our deal with the Aztecas, or, hell, the details of the triangle scheme. General Kimbali could be sending over organic plums from the Vatican, for all he knows! He wouldn't waste his time coming after a few swindlers. It's just too bad we couldn't get some pictures of him with the fake Emerald, or we still could've gone with the original plan."

"Oi, Vitali, mate... we have a problem." Tobias' voice piped up from one of the halls. He had re-entered the lounge, this time helping along a rather short, bald, middle-aged African man dressed in an un-buttoned orange shirt and some underwear, and nothing else. He was quite inebriated, the way he shook his head and his bottle of Cherenkov Vodka around. In his non-bottle-holding hand, he held the real, ten-thousand carat Ludendorff Beaver Emerald, or so it appeared.

"You... yoouuu... you are the greatest fucking nun I've ever seen!" he slurred, pointing at Vitali. "You should come to my place, we can go and massacre some... people, I forget who, but it'd be great! Catch!" The man threw the Emerald at Vitali, who jumped to focus and barely managed to grab it.

"Kimbali, be fucking careful with that, will you?!"

"No... you be careful, you... Gorilla kisser! You kiss Silverbacks on the lips and you enjoy it!" General Kimbali took another swig of his vodka. "Long live Mobutu Sese Seekin' Kooky Nigel Bartender the Zulu Banger!" Tobias let him go and he stumbled to the floor, fainted.

"Lightweight... what's the problem, Tobias?"

"That Emerald, the General was messin' around with it. It cracked." Tobias answered, without a hint of doubt in his voice. Immediately afterwards, he coughed and sniffed, wiping his nose on his arm, as if he had a cold.

"What do you mean, 'it cracked'? Gemstones don't just crack!"

"Exactly."

Tobias proceeded to walk into the kitchen for reasons not elaborated upon, as Vitali decided to take a closer inspection of the Beaver Emerald. Just as Tobias said, there was a rather large, striking crack on the bottom side.

"...What the _fuck_?!" He whispered to himself, his face slowly turning to a fearful expression. He knew what Tobias was implying, and the crack in the 'gemstone' supported this. But he had to be sure, before he allowed his repressed feelings to get the better of him. He closed his eyes to psyche himself up, and as Ivan and Zinny watched in anticipation, the latter looking rather fed up, he threw the Emerald onto the floor, hard.

He heard a shatter.

Opening his eyes back up, he looked back at the floor and saw the Emerald broken into three pieces, with little green bits surrounding the fragmented 'gemstone'. His expression quickly turned to one of horror.

"That... that's fucking worthless glass! You could buy this at a shitty post-ironic art show in Kiev for ten thousand _roubles_! I... wha... this can't be right, did Jaroslavich give us two fakes?!"

"Umm..." Ivan replied, his already-terrified mood now even more terrified. "No. No, he didn't. He didn't want anyone getting suspicious, so he sent the real one here so we could have someone construct the replica from it. You know how paranoid he is."

"So... if this is the fake Beaver Emerald... where's the real one?"

"Take a wild guess, cousin." Zinny suggested, irritatedly.

Vitali slowly dragged his feet over to the wall and leaned against it with his arm. As he tried to grasp the sheer gravity of what this new revelation meant, he looked down at the floor and rubbed his forehead, dripping with the sweat of fear.

"Ivan... did the police find the suitcase at the Old Strip?" He asked, unsettlingly calm.

"Umm... I... I don't think so..."

Vitali looked over at him, with the sort of look that could kill someone. If he could shoot lasers out his eyes, anyway.

"Uh... n...n-no, they didn't..."

Vitali looked back down at the floor. "So... if we don't have it, and the police don't have it... who else is there?"

"Trevor Phillips." Zinny answered, saving Ivan the trouble of building up enough courage necessary to break the news.

"...Fuck..." Vitali muttered to himself. "Fuck... fuck, **fuck, fuck, **_**fuck**_**!**" He raised his voice as he progressed through the 'fucks', walking back to the sofa, before quieting back down. He slumped down on the sofa, slowly dragging himself down towards the floor, as he looked at the ceiling and put his hands on his face, still trying to wrap his head around the horrible situation he know found himself in.

"That Emerald belongs to Pavel Artyomevich Jaroslavich... that six-million-dollar rock... he lent it to us... to me, in good faith. If he finds out we've lost it..."

"...He'll shove you into a meat grinder, cut up your minced remains and feed them to his cat?" Ivan finished his sentence for him. Normally he'd be screaming and flailing in panic in right now, but usually Vitali would be the one to calm him down. Now Vitali was the one panicking, but he was doing it internally. Ivan knew the panic would be building up like a volcano, and he knew better than to blow the top off by annoying him.

"...Bingo." Vitali confirmed.

An awkward, horrific silence engulfed the room for five minutes. Kimbali continued to fidget about on the floor in his unconsciousness, mumbling to himself in Swahili, and the sounds of traffic could be heard, but aside from that, nobody said a word. Internally, however, Vitali and Ivan were screaming for help. They had fucked up very bad this time, and they knew it.

"So... should we do something?" Zinny finally broke the silence.

"Yes!" Vitali exclaimed, his voice raised, making Ivan jump again. "Just... let me think... let... me... think..."

Vitali knew what the best solution was, but he was extremely reluctant to say it, for saying it would give his cousin a free license to gloat. Besides, though it'd be a cold day in hell before he'd let himself be seen panicking, that didn't mean he wasn't panicking. The panic clouded his judgement, and instead of trying to think of a solution, he tried to think of someone to blame.

"Ivan... Ivan, Ivan, Ivan... you should've picked up the case."

"I, wha... **how the fuck was I supposed to know I had the real Emerald?!** I wasn't the one who packed them!" He explained, alarmed, not wishing to be on the receiving end of Vitali's anger.

"Then who did?" Vitali asked again, still unsettlingly calm.

"_**I don't know!**_ Some... random footsoldier, maybe it was Oleg! If you want to blame anyone for this mess, blame him! He was the one who set the creepy old fucker off!"

Vitali waved his hand dismissively. "I don't fucking care, it doesn't matter now... we just have to get it back. At all costs."

"At all costs, you say? Never heard that one before. So tell me, how will you get the Emerald back, Mr. Modern Vory v zakone?" Zinny snarked, picking possibly the worst time to get a rise out of her cousin.

Of course, it seemed to have worked a little. It didn't blow the top off his figurative volcano, but it did crack it open a little. He forcefully stood up and spelled it out for her. "You know what, cousin, you're a real bitch! You want to see me solve a problem your way, huh? Fine! We'll play your little fucked-up game!"

Shortly after he said this, Tobias returned to the lounge, holding what looked like a stainless steel whipped cream dispenser. Before he could do anything with it, Vitali power-walked over to him and snatched it away.

"Tobias! I want you to find this Trevor fucker, kill him, and bring back the Emerald!"

Just as he had predicted, Zinny snatched up this opportunity like a bird catching a worm. "Oh, so _now_ you decide to kill Trevor! When told he had murdered fifty-three of your men, you were all 'meh, who cares? As long as I'm not dead!' Only after finding out he's got that glorified rock did you finally come to your senses and fucking get down to business! And you accuse _me_ of wanting Pavel's dick? I'm starting to think _**you**_ want it up the ass more than me, you selfish hypocrite!"

"Will you just fucking shut up for once in your life, Zinny?! I'm doing what you suggested aren't I? A 'thank you' would be nice!"

"But you just told me to fucking shut up, didn't you?"

That managed to crack open Vitali's mental volcano even more, almost to the point of total eruption. He knew he should cut his losses and get everyone out now, before he caused something horrible.

"Y'know, I've had enough of your fucking smart-assery! It has to stop! And don't fucking order me around, either! You may be my cousin, and I love you, but I'm in charge here! That means I do things _my way_, Zinaida Rascalova, _**my fucking way**_**! Not yours! Now **_**fuck off**_**! All of you! **Let me bash my head against the wall in peace..."

"Ugh, imbeciles! I'm surrounded by fucking imbeciles!" Zinny ranted, storming off to the door. Before leaving the suite, she stopped and turned back to give a leaving remark. "You'd better watch yourself, cousin. If you keep trying to be some kind of pacifist in this business, someone will squash you like a bug. This is not a threat, you understand. It's just friendly advice." With that, she left.

Ivan followed after her, moving quite slowly and cautiously, not wishing to provoke him even more. He had already seen enough bloodthirsty anger for one day.

As Tobias picked up General Kimbali's unconscious body and slung him over his shoulder to be escorted out, Vitali stopped him briefly to add a bit of detail to his otherwise vague orders.

"Tobias... I'll have someone put together a profile on Trevor Phillips. You can expect it tomorrow morning. _**Don't**_ disappoint me..."

"'Ave I ever disappointed you before?" Tobias asked, curious as to why his capability was called into question.

"No. You haven't. That is why I expect this to be pulled off perfectly."

"I can do that."

"Good. You'll be paid well, as usual. That's all you need to know for now."

"And what about the General?"

"I don't care about him, do what you like with him. Dump him in the fountain outside for all I care, he won't remember any of this in the morning. Now get out of here, and don't come back until Trevor Phillips is dead and you have Jaroslavich's Emerald."

"Vitali, mate, I'll come back with the Emerald, and I'll mount Mr. Phillips' head on your wall for yer."

"...Not his head, please... I don't want to get blood on the floor. Just bring his body, and leave his face intact so I can be triple-sure."

"Registered." He responded. With that, Tobias left the suite too, hauling the drunken General Kimbali out with him.

Now all alone once again, Vitali went back to the sofa and was about to smoke his Meth pipe, only to realise the vapours had been exhausted. He dropped the pipe on the floor and slumped down once again, this time allowing himself to slide all the way to the floor in despair. Even if he could recover the Emerald, he knew that his own credibility was forever damaged in his eyes. He could only hope Zinny didn't use the situation as an excuse to influence his decisions more.

* * *

**Meanwhile, a few hours later...**

**Ace Liquor (AKA T.P.I. Global Headquarters), Sandy Shores, Blaine County, San Andreas**

**02:10, April 3rd, 2013**

* * *

The boardroom-slash-production facility for Trevor Phillips Industries/Enterprises/Incorporated/Corporation/Limited/Conglomerate, or, as most people would identify it, a dirty Meth lab and kitchen on the upper floor of an abandoned liquor store in the middle of a desert, was working on a long haul tonight. The upstairs rooms were brightly lit and were filling up with smoke and vapour, making the building look like a giant, glowing cauldron out in the darkened derelict town, such as the variety owned by witches. Appropriate; in Trevor Phillips' mind, he was no doubt making magic happen in there.

Trevor himself, now having shed his suit jacket unceremoniously onto the floor (almost re-coloured brownish-red from the dried blood of numerous Russian gangsters), was sitting at the 'kitchen' table, tapping away on an archaic typewriter, his chair surrounded by balls of screwed-up paper peppering his discarded jacket. Sitting prominently next the typewriter was the fake Beaver Emerald he had picked up at the massacre site... or so he thought.

"'Dear Fuckface..." he typed-and-spoke, "I would like to tell you that any of the business relations we could have had, are now completely down the shitter...' fuck, that's grammatically incorrect!" he complained as he ripped the paper off the typewriter, screwed it up, and sent it to join its fallen brothers on the floor.

He started again. "...'Dear four-eyed asshole with the highly appropriate last name of 'Rascalov''... fuck, now I have a better idea! Fuck my brain! **Fuck it, fuck it, **_**skull-fuck it!**_" And another one to the floor.

Trevor cleared his throat as he began his next attempt. "O...kay... let's see, let's see... if I start it off with politeness then move into bloodthirsty anger... 'Dear Vitali Lukyanyvich Rape-me-in-the-ass-calov, I would like to express my extreme displeasure at getting fucked over a second time by your dysfunctional fuck-fest of a family. You are living human trash, fit only for being mulched after your unmourned death and scattered all over Mirror Park, Los Santos, to be literally shat upon by hipsters and promptly absorb their shit, being compost, and I fucking hate hipsters, so that's saying a lot! But because you chose the Ludendorff Beaver Emerald to try and rip me off with, and because you are so worthless, I will not give you the satisfaction of coming back to Las Venturas to tie your legs above your head into a bloody, mangled knot. Instead, I will let you live out the rest of your life in despair, knowing that you fucked up the one business opportunity that would've let you take over Blaine County. From now 'till the day you choke on your lackey Ivan's cock and die slowly and horribly, drowning in his cum, the county will forever remain that one tiny, annoying territory on the map that you don't run, you piece of communist shit. Yours pissed-offedly, Trevor Phillips. PS: it's not technically 'fucking', if you don't penetrate.'"

A satisfied grin formed on Trevor's mug as he pulled his chair back and clapped his hands together, victorious. "Per-fecto! And it only took me two fucking hours to write it out and spell it correctly. I should write a fucking fan fiction. Tonight, every male fictional character in the whole goddamn world turns into a gay vampire and fucks each other in the ass while every trace of their manliness and happiness with their lives vanishes into the abyss! I'm a fucking natural!" He boasted to himself.

"Hey, whatcha doin' there, Trevor?" A moronic voice suddenly said from the nearby doorway. Trevor slowly turned his head, dead silent, to see his lackey Wade Hebert standing there, in his typical Juggalo-esque attire, with his trademark look of childlike curiosity on his slightly bruised face.

"Wade, Wade, Wade..." Trevor said, apparently disappointed. "How many times have I told you not to poke your little broken nose into the higher affairs of Trevor Phillips Enterprises? You may be too stupid to have figured this out, but, you're on the bottom of the shit-coated totem pole. You need to work your way up a lot of shit before you're entitled to know what I do in here."

"Well... what about Ron?" Wade asked.

"No, not Ron!"

"Chef?"

"No!"

"Then who else?"

"Well let's see, going from a process of elimination, we've eliminated you, Ron and Chef, so that leaves, um, let's see... oh, just me! Writing a letter of complaint is an intimate ritual, practised for decades by the people of America! The moment a business gets its first letter of complaint is like the first time you wake up, hungover, inside the corpse of a horse! It's a fucking milestone, and I'm enabling Mr. Rascalov to experience it, since there's a depressing shortage of letters of complaint being passed around criminal organisations! I can't just have morons like you walking in and fucking it up by interrupting me or spilling loose bits of brain on my paper!"

"Oh, I see..." Wade absent-mindedly observed. "Now I want a complaint letter! Have we ever gotten a complaint letter?"

"Why, yes, we have! I was hoping you'd ask. Johnny K sent me a message on Lifeinvader the other day, told me my 'Meth is bullshit', and so I said to him 'no, that's just the Meth I gave _you_. And it wasn't Meth at all, it was literal bullshit painted white. So it's no fucking wonder, really.' For the record, that was the stuff I gave you yesterday, as well."

"That was bullshit? Huh... tasted more like bird-shit... a Seagull shat in my mouth a couple weeks ago, before y'ask..."

"Yeah, I know a Seagull shat in your mouth, 'cause I was the one who pushed you out into the Alamo Sea tied to that raft, at one hundred-and-fourteen degrees fahrenheit. It was a good training exercise, you gotta admit. Toughened you up good, or at least to a... tolerable degree."

"I dunno, I mean... it was kinda hot, like... burning hot... and the sea stank of poisonous garbage and stuff..."

"Precisely, Wade. You know what they say, huh, whatever doesn't kill you but is also extremely unpleasant in just about every other way, makes you both stronger and, more importantly, more obedient. Or, alternatively, **I'll do that again if you **_**fuck**_** with me!**"

"B-b-buh... I didn't do anything!" Wade pointed out, sulkingly.

"I know, but if you're going to threaten someone with physical pain if they don't do exactly what they're fucking told, it's important to take the time to actually demonstrate that physical pain. Otherwise they'll get all smart and think you're fucking with 'em, huh."

"Well, I guess that makes sense..."

"Yeah, you're fuckin'-A right it makes sense! Now, would you please fuck off..." he tried to wave Wade away, disinterestedly. "It's past your bedtime, isn't it?"

"Oh shit, yeah, it is!" He reminded himself. As he turned away to rush out the room, however, he stopped briefly to ask a final pointless question that would no doubt prove to be the catalyst for another 'adventure' such as the one Trevor had just described.

"Hey, Trevor, can I ask you somethin'?"

"No, Wade."

Ten seconds passed.

"...How about now?"

"**Argh, fuck! Fine!**" Trevor relented, knowing that he couldn't practice his usual methods of dealing with extremely annoying individuals on one of his own lackeys.

"That Emerald there... the one that's shaped like a funny Gopher... where's it from?"

"Well, Wade, it's from the fucking ground, like most rocks, right?"

"Wow... how comes I never did find any Gopher-shaped rocks, then?"

"Four reasons. One, you're a fucking idiot. Two, they don't _**form...**_ like that naturally! Three, you're a fucking idiot! Four, this is, once again, within the glittery realm of high-level executive knowledge that is off-limits to you! Well, except for the fact that I'm gonna shove it up your ass tomorrow."

"You sure that's a good idea? I mean, that's pure Emerald there. I checked it out earlier, and-"

"You _**what**_?!" Trevor jumped to his feet, grabbing Wade by the collar, practically growling into his face. "I told you not to mess with my _**fucking stuff**_!"

"Agh... ahhh, I'm sorry Trevor, but... I just saw it lyin' there, and it looked really pretty, I just couldn't help myself... I have a degree in Geology, and-"

"Wait wait wait wait..." Trevor suddenly let go of Wade as he stepped back and began rubbing his temples, obviously surprised by this revelation. "You... _you're_ interested in Geology, you?"

"Well... no, not really, that's a lie, I just know what Geology is. But I heard from Ron that you think that Emerald's fake. How'd you know?"

"Well, of course _you'd_ have fallen for the Ruskies' scam. The only reason I haven't thrown this in the garbage is because it brings back memories..." Trevor stopped to look back at the Emerald, suddenly coming off as sentimental as he picked it up and held it in front of him. "Ah, the Ludendorff Beaver, biggest Beaver in the Midwest, except perhaps Amanda Townley's, that goddamned magnet of time-that-could-be-spent-sticking-shit-up. Fuck, now I'm getting all emotional, y'know? Fuck me... I really fucking wish it was me and Brad and Michael that decided to rob that jewelry store in Bullworth! But no, Michael had to go die on me, fuck! Y'know, if I could bring Michael back from the dead, I would! I'm dead fuckin' serious."

"B-b-buh, umm... I... I thought you said you was gonna shove it up my ass..." Wade asked, several times, as Trevor went down his own blood-stained Memory Lane.

"Yeah, I'm still gonna do that, but then I'm gonna put it on my bathroom cabinet and stare at it while I masturbate for four hours!" He announced, slamming the Emerald down on the table.

"Well, that _does_ sound like a good idea..." Wade reassured his boss out of terror "...But what if it actually _is_ real? Would you still wanna shove it up my ass?"

"Yes, of course I would!" He quickly responded, instinctively. But then he stopped for a moment to actually think about the question, almost in the same way a 'normal' person would. Not something Trevor does very often. "...Actually... no, I wouldn't. It would drive the value down."

Trevor looked over at Wade and noticed a small smile forming on his face. He knew what he was up to. Trevor was smart enough to know he controlled his minions through fear; after all, he relished the criminal lifestyle precisely because, amongst other things, it allowed him to be the bully nature intended him to be. But if he wanted to keep them in his planned bullying schedule (for, if he wanted to be a drugs and arms entrepreneur, he'd need to be organised about it), he'd need to be ahead of the curve when his minions had any plans of their own.

"You devious little fuck, you're trying to worm your way out of a customary hazing exercise! Truant!" He shouted, 'twitching' his fist up in the direction of Wade's face, causing the latter to flinch.

"Aagh, p-please don't hurt me, Trevor! I'm just tryin' to be helpful!" He spluttered out, looking like he was about to burst into tears like the man-child he is.

"Oh, shit, **no! No crying! I fucking **_**hate**_** crying!**" Trevor reminded his lackey. In order to prevent an unwanted outburst, he resorted to bribery; particularly frustrating. "Ugh... how's about this, I'll ask Chef, our resident second-best expert on everything, about the Emerald, and if it's real, then _maybe_ I won't shove it up your ass, but I can't make any promises!"

Trevor turned over to the steaming door on the other end of the kitchen, and yelled out "**Chef! **_**Cheeeeeef!**_** Get in here, you magnificent asshole!**"

"Trevor, is this really necessary?" Chef asked, somewhat cheesed off, as he power-walked out of his lab in his typical aproned-over attire, adjusting his glasses. "I'm trying to make this designer drug you asked for. It has a _lot_ of Acid in it, the dosage has to be perfect so that it fries someone's brain as quickly as possible!"

"Yeah, this is _**really**_ fuckin' necessary, Chef, my man. Wade here is about to cry like a... like a... like a Trevor Phillips when he has to **punch the **_**shit**_ out of a moron who won't stop crying and happens to work for him, so it's irritating because all the crying will stop the moron from working! The only way to stop this disaster, is to authenticate that Emerald, that one, right there, the green one with dried-up semen droplets for eyes."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah... the... one you took from those Ruskies you slaughtered in Las Venturas. I know just how to authenticate a priceless Emerald. Give it here." He practically ordered, holding his gloved hand out. 'Chef' was always the only person Trevor respected enough to take shit from. This was primarily because Chef was one of the few people who _wouldn't_ take any shit from Trevor. Some of the best people, in Trevor's psychotic opinion, were people who wouldn't let him push them around like ragdolls filled with blood and organs.

"Alright, Chef, alright..." He quietly responded to Chef's request, handing it over as 'ordered'. The bespectacled chemist-slash-hired gun threw the Emerald up in the air and caught it a few times, until he eventually stood back and violently threw it overhand at the wall opposite, almost smacking Wade in the head if he hadn't ducked at the last second. The Emerald smashed into the wall, leaving a small crack.

The three-fourths of Trevor Phillips Industries poked their heads forwards to inspect the damage... and, to their surprise, found there was none. Not a single crack or any sign of fragmentation. The Emerald had survived the impact completely intact. The only sign it had been thrown into the wall at all was some dust from said wall scattered over it. Both Wade and Trevor looked on with their eyes widening at an alarming rate; Trevor was beginning to think of the literal jewel he had stumbled upon, while Wade was less specifically thinking about good stuff that would make people happy, but he didn't know how exactly.

"Yyyyeah, it's real. You're welcome." Chef concluded as he prepared to go back into the steaming lab.

"Hey, hey, hey, just where the fuck do you think you're going, huh?" Trevor stopped him, physically, by walking over to him and placing his arm in his path, after having reached over and picked up the Emerald off the floor.

"Doing my job." Chef replied, his statement quite self-evident.

"You're job's whatever I say it is, and right now, it's staying here and realising what the _fuck_ we've tripped over!" Trevor started, sounding much more joyful than he had been throughout the entire day. "If this is the _real_ Ludendorff Beaver Emerald, _the_ Emerald that some low-rent gang of fuckers that **could've been me, Brad and **_**Michael**_**...** stole from that New England shithole... Wade, could you, in all your years, ever wrap your microscopic head around how much this is worth, huh?"

"Uhh... probably not, to be honest." Wade responded, his prior state of terror having vanished by this point.

"I have literally no idea what you guys are talking about, what's the big fuckin' deal about this 'Beaver Emerald'?" Chef questioned.

"Let me tell you the big fuckin' deal, Chef... this Emerald is worth... _at least_... six million dollars! At least! Just imagine, we could buy ourselves... uh... well, I don't know, but we could buy ourselves some shit to help the business expand and consume the entirety of San Andreas like the Herpes on Cesar V's dick, and then once we've done that, we'll go to Robada, to the two Yanktons, to Liberty State... and _beyond_! Maybe we could even buy out the fucking Canadian Air Force, and then we can _**slaughter**_ that bitch of a witch who **threw me out!**"

"Cesar V has Herpes?" Wade innocently inquired, only to be ignored, as he usually is in the presence of Trevor and Chef.

"Well, you might want to be careful, Trevor, I don't think the spook puppets will miss... that ugly piece of shit." Chef pointed out.

"Yeah yeah yeah, don't worry about it! I'll call Ron, he'll get us a buyer, probably some Middle Eastern oil baron. If all else fails, we just sell it back to Rascalov. Then _I'll _be the one figuratively raping _him_ in the ass! Ha!"

"Woah, hold on Trevor, think about this for a second. If you stole this from some Ruskie assholes, don't you think they'll be pissed enough to send someone after you after they realise their little fuck-up?" Chef cut in again.

"...Well _of course_ they're going to do that! And when they get here, we'll fucking kill them! What did you think we would do, give 'em a fruit basket with our cocks hidden inside a Pineapple? Besides, it's their own goddamn fault they gave me the real Emerald like the morons they are."

"But how can you be so sure they were conning you? What if they actually wanted to deal with us?"

"It's just a feeling I've got, you know? Something was _not_ right about that meet-up, there was the stench of piss from the terror-of-me-catching-on in the air! And even if they did, **fuck 'em anyway!** One of their cheap-ass goons called me a motherfucker, the ignorant prick! They completely failed to control their men! If they can't even control their thugs, how in the fuck can they hope to cooperate efficiently with _me_ in this... triangle scheme? Huh?

"Riiight, well, you seem to have things covered."

"Of course I do; it's what separates me from your average, everyday killers, who just hold their guns sideways and... do backflips and frontflips and all that shit; the only good flip is a bird-flip, fact. Right, time to get down to business! Wade, fuck off! Chef, get your ass back in the lab and finish that drug! I gotta talk to Ron."

Wade promptly got up to his feet and ran down the stairs, far away from his beloved employer-slash-tormentor, and Chef got back to work in his lab. As Trevor whipped out his Facade phone and dialled Ron's number, he thought a bit depressingly, given the highly fortunate situation he found himself in. How this could've been an adventure between him and his old stick-up buddies. Indeed, he and the others knew about the Emerald's existence since it was created in 2003. They had even been planning a heist on a convoy transporting the Emerald through North Yankton, before the unfortunate Ludendorff job. The Beaver Emerald was more than just a six-million-dollar rock for Trevor; it was the representation of his former life, and the events that lead to him abandoning it, all thanks to the government and their cronies. Perhaps the world was not as bad as he thought, if it would repay him for all his misery and heartbreak with this opportunity.

"Trevor?" Ron answered over the phone, shaky as ever.

"Ron, you little shit! I need you to find me a buyer for exotic gemstones. Big money. Millions of dollars, and do it fucking fast, like the Hare that attacked you the other day! Do it like that fucking Hare was coming right at you, which it will if you fuck this up, I'll go out and get a Hare and watch as it beats you to a pulp!"

"Umm... a-alright, Trevor, you got it!"

That was the end of that conversation. All Trevor had to do now was wait until the Rascalov and his thugs decided to try taking his lucky break away from him. Like he would allow such a thing to happen. No, this was _his_ day.


	4. Pound Cake, Part 1

**The Camel's Toe Hotel & Casino, Las Venturas, Clarence County, Robada**

**08:39, 3rd April 2013**

_**Pound Cake**_

* * *

Tobias had spent most of that eventful night wide awake in his hotel room at the Pyramid-themed Camel's Toe, drinking coffee and reading _Red Dead_ by Jack Marston. He had changed his clothes since the night before, ditching his 'requisitioned' Merryweather uniform for something more casual: a short-sleeve buttoned shirt with a lime green-and-black racing checker pattern, cream cargo trousers and some skate shoes, also lime green. He retained his golden watch and chain, though, also adding in another chain connecting from his pocket to his hidden belt.

He was reading the book while sitting up on his Hieroglyph-patterned bed in his hotel room, light beaming in through slits in the blinds. Unlike Vitali Rascalov's suite at the Lewz hotel, this hotel room was much smaller and more basic, with just a room with a bed and a minibar and a tiny en-suite, and logically so. Rascalov had been practically living in his presidential suite for over a month, while Tobias had only been there for about a week.

Tobias was rather absorbed with his reading; it was one of several reasons he didn't get much sleep, besides his 'workaholism' and penchant for tripping on Acid. His warped mind took the events of the infamous Wild West outlaw John Marston, the writer's father, as proof that doing good deeds for the sake of it gets you nowhere, so you may as well embrace what fate had prepared for you. In his case, being a killer of human beings. Better to be what you are than try and be something you're not, he would say.

Noticing the sun stretching shadows across his idle form, he put his book down on his bed and checked his watch: eight-forty. Another reason he had been awake this whole time was because of his impatience. When given a contract, he likes details, as soon as possible. Rascalov had told him he would get a profile on his latest target, Trevor Phillips, 'in the morning'. That wasn't really any good for a methodical person like Tobias; that could've been _anything_ between one in the morning and eleven in the morning. The sooner he read up on the target, the better.

His waiting finally paid off, he hoped, when his phone began ringing again. As he picked it up off the counter to his left, he was surprised to see that an 'unknown caller' was phoning him instead of Vitali, as he was expecting.

"Sorry, you've got the wrong number, mate." He said quickly and disinterestedly to the mystery caller, as he did with all mystery callers.

"Don't you fucking hang up on me, big guy!" emphasized the accented voice of Zinaida Rascalova from the other side.

"Ah. Zinny. I thought yer cousin was gonna call me." He answered again, recognising the voice and changing his tone to a much more interested one.

"He was, but he's been too busy sulking and getting stoned off his ass. Insufferable asshole."

"D'you have some information for me?" Tobias tried to hurry things along.

"Fuck, you're an impatient one, aren't you? Yes, I've just e-mailed you the profile of our good friend Mr. Phillips. There's something else, as well. We managed to track Ivan's beloved car to a Vehicle Pound around Spinybed. Run by this Brazilian guy, Vasco Vargas. Apparently Vargas was a Cocaine delivery boy in the eighties, doing marathons in his Boxville between Rio and Sao Paulo, though it seems he's gone legit since then. In fact, he seems to fancy himself a vigilante, as he's received a lot of finder's fees from the local cops, even ran his own bounty office on the side a couple years back... you might want to be careful around him. He'll sell your ass out if you make too much noise, I guarantee."

"I see. How's this relate to the contract?"

"I was getting to that! ...You see, all we know about Mr. Phillips' location is that he operates in Blaine County; we tried asking the Aztecas about it, but their leader, a washed-up braggart called Cesar, proved stubborn and paranoid, thought we might betray him or something moronic like that. However, Ivan is also paranoid. He installed a black box recorder in his car, in case it got stolen and recovered or he had an accident. If you can recover the tapes, then maybe Mr. Phillips said something that could give you a lead while he was escaping from his morbid modern art project at the Old Strip."

"So I should just kill this Vargas bloke as soon as I get there?"

"I'd rather you didn't. Not because of some arbitrary 'thou shalt not kill' decree as my cousin would've said, but because he's well-connected. If he dies, people will notice. Normally we wouldn't care, but what with this massacre, I'd rather we kept attention on the down-low."

"Understood."

"Good dog. Ivan wants to come with you, so he can get his car back, since he lost his woman and he needs to compensate for his losses and bolster his own sense of self-worth and all that miserable midlife crisis bullshit. He'll be waiting for you to pick him up at Pirates In Men's Pants; you know, the latest victim of the Las Venturas tycoons' pretentious crusade against fun. I liked the fucking pirate battles, damnit. No idea why they didn't change the name as well. Oh, and he's bringing a goon with him. He's a quiet one, don't take any notice."

"Understood." Tobias repeated, almost in the exact same tone as before.

"Understood, understood, understood..." she said mockingly, pulling off a squeaky imitation. "Shit, you like saying that, don't you? Switch it up a little. Or don't, I really couldn't give a fuck. Remember, and I can't stress this enough, bring back the fucking Emerald once Trevor's dead! If my braindead cousin wants to smooth things over with Jaroslavich once he finds out we lost it, we're going to need it. Now, get your ass over to Ivan's ass, I have to deal with my cousin before he gets us all killed by the FOS or fans of Neofort FC or whoever it is that Jaroslavich sics on people he really fucking hates."

"Affirmative."

"'_Affirmative_'? ...You must be joking. Work on your social skills, that's all I'll say."

With that, Zinny abruptly hung up on Tobias, evidently preferring to end her call on a contemplative note, of sorts. Without hesitation, Tobias checked his emails, and sure enough, there was one from Zinny, or 'ЗинаидаРаскаловa', as she was known here, addressed to him, 'TTSaleh'. And sure enough, it was the file he was expecting. At the top were some police mugshots of Trevor from one of his past arrests, his scarred face grimacing at him in front of a height grid. Underneath was this:

_'Name: Phillips, Trevor_

_Age: 48_

_Date of Birth: July 13th, 1964_

_Nationality: Canadian_

_Occupation: Leader of Trevor Phillips Industries (AKA Trevor Phillips Enterprises, Trevor Phillips Corporation, Trevor Phillips Incorporated, T.P.I. Conglomerate), a drug- and gun-running organisation based in Blaine Country, San Andreas. _

_Notes: +Exact location, size of his operation, or staff is unknown, due to an unwillingness to divulge information on the part of their main affiliates, the Varrios Los Aztecas and The Lost Motorcycle Club. Despite what we had told him, we neglected to inspect his operation._

_+Formerly served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, but was permanently grounded and discharged after being deemed mentally unstable._

_+Formerly part of an infamous three-man team of bank robbers, alongside Brad Snider and Michael Townley. Group dissolved after a botched heist in Ludendorff, North Yankton, 2004, after Townley's death at the hands of FIB Agent Dave Norton, and Snider's subsequent imprisonment._

_+Has been diagnosed with too many mental conditions to list. Has remarkably short temper and is known to react disproportionately to perceived threats against his person or his business. Is also known to engage in exotic sexual practices. Highly unpredictable._

_+Is known to be armed and extremely dangerous in just about every way possible. Approach with caution._

_+Don't call him a motherfucker! ~Ivan B.'_

Upon reading all of this, Tobias sat back and smiled at himself, for he was finally presented with a target worthy of his skills. As satisfying as it was for him to get paid thousands of dollars for murdering people, second-nature for a man like Tobias, most of those people were unarmed, untrained businessmen, legal and otherwise, who hid only behind guards, which often took the fun out of the job. But when dealing with a person like Trevor, no, the target himself would fight back, like a wounded animal. In his mind, some of the best people were the people who wouldn't take their death lying down. He could even relate to Trevor in a way, looking at the part about him getting discharged from the RCAF.

In a possibly celebratory moment, Tobias turned off his phone, dropped it on the bed, and leaned over to open his minibar. Inside he had concealed a steel whipped cream dispenser, much like the one Vitali Rascalov had snatched away from him the night before. He took it out and slowly raised the cream nozzle up to his nose. Pressing the paddle to open the nozzle, instead of filling his nostrils with whipped cream, he instead filled it with a cold gas.

The gas seemingly tickled his insides, making him chuckle in bursts for about a minute, as his sense of sound became distorted and he began feeling highly euphoric and dissociated with his current situation, just as he had done when tripping on Acid the night before. This time around, however, the effects lasted much shorter, and were over within five minutes, at which point he was back to his usual self. After sneezing and sniffing some more, knowing that'd be the last drug-induced happy moment he'd have for quite a while, he got up to the door, to do his job, looking forward to the meeting he would have with this... potential counterpart of his? Perhaps.

* * *

**The Strip, Las Venturas, Clarence County, Robada**

**09:07, April 3rd, 2013**

* * *

Tobias pulled up to the parking lane of the revamped Pirates In Men's Pants Hotel & Casino, driving a bluish-silver Benefactor Feltzer. He waited for Ivan Bytchkov to arrive outside the building, with cheap sunglasses on to avoid getting blinded by the clear sunlight gleaming off the sports car's hood; it was important that he saw the display on his SatNav, since he'd never even heard of this pound Zinny had told him about. As he sat waiting, he shivered slightly and began coughing up phlegm again, prompting him to remove some tissue from the glovebox and discreetly blow his nose.

As he surveyed the 'bay' in front of the casino, his attention drawn to the miniature pirate ship 'docked' there, he spotted Ivan in his unmissable red suit and gold tie. He was power-walking along the side of the 'bay', holding a milkshake in a striped cup-and-straw, talking and making wild gestures to a rather large and muscular white fellow. He was wearing a much simpler black suit and a purple shirt, and the sunglasses just about anyone with a brain would wear in this sort of weather. As the pair of them made their way up some stairs to ground level, closer to Tobias' car, he noticed the man had a dark buzzcut and a small soul patch under his mouth. He didn't seem to say anything back to Ivan's constant talking; Ivan probably lost some money in the casino and was ranting to the man about it, Tobias guessed.

Eventually, Ivan and the big man reached the top of the stairs, just a few paces away from Tobias' car. The two men parted with Ivan giving the bigger man a cheerful slap on the back and a guns-akimbo gesture to him; clearly, he'd recovered from the marathon of bloodthirsty anger last night. The big man simply nodded before lumbering over to his car, a navy blue Übermacht Zion parked some distance behind Tobias.

Ivan strolled quite confidently over to Tobias' car and tapped on the window, prompting him to open it; electronically, of course.

"Wassup, mah homeboyyyyyyy?!" Ivan asked quite ecstatically, followed with a short chuckle and a slurp of his milkshake.

"We've got work to do, mate. Get in." Tobias politely reminded him, serious as ever.

"Okay, man, if you want to be all serious like that..." he responded, still sounding quite cheerful. And possibly a tad delirious, like he was under the influence of something, Tobias noticed. As Ivan strolled his way around to the passenger side and got in (without doing his seatbelt, as you might expect), Tobias made his inquiry.

"Ivan, whatchu on? Has 'at shake got somethin' in it?"

"He-hey, man, put on some music, will you?" He asked, ignoring Tobias' question completely. "I tell you, Toby, my limey friend, this vanilla-slash-banana shake is the _shit_! Best fucking five dollars I ever spent!" He gushed, taking another slurp. "You want some?"

"...Sure, why not. Give it 'ere." Tobias responded in the affirmative. Ivan obliged, handing it over. Tobias took a rather lengthy slurp on the straw. Eventually, Ivan started waving his hand around a little, indicating that he wanted it back. Tobias, in turn, obliged, finishing his slurp and handing it back before going quiet for a bit. "...That milkshake was five dollars, you said?"

"Damn straight, my homeboy!"

"Well, it's... good, but it ain't five-dollar-shake good."

"Well, now, I _weep_ for you, 'cause your tongue must be pretty fucked. That's _almost_ as tasty as the ol' baka-ka-kaaaw, know what I mean, know what I mean, eh, eh?" He said very quickly, which all but confirmed Tobias' theory.

"The fuck's wrong with you, mate?"

"Oh, right, heheh... I'm sorry, I'm really excitable this morning, I was _up_... _**all night**_, doing Ecstasy and raving, naked, in my hotel room, with the window open, feeling the cold night air on my dick! **I fucking **_**love**_** Las Venturas, man! **_**Love it**_**!**"

"Jesus Christ..." Tobias muttered to himself, shaking his head, astounded. Before he even thought about getting to work, he opened up the glovebox in front of Ivan again, and quickly grabbed the whipped cream dispenser from the hotel room, concealed inside.

"Hey, is that... that's Nitrous Oxide, gimme some of that shit!" He tried to snatch it away, like a baby trying to steal a lollipop.

Tobias reacted quickly, simply holding it away from him. "You're gettin' bugger-all. You need to _focus_." He affirmed, placing it on the small cup holder next to his feet, on the driver's door, out of Ivan's reach.

"But... yeah, yeah, you're right, man... okay... focus, Ivan, focus..." Ivan muttered to himself, as he rubbed his sweaty face with his hands, slurping at his shake again, before shaking his head around and slapping himself on the temples. "**Let's **_**do**_** this fucking thing, bitches!**"

With that enthusiastic announcement of intention to get down to business, Tobias pulled away from the Casino, just after noticing the bigger man's Zion drive by. Of course, they were facing the wrong way, forcing Tobias to drive over to the nearest gap in the middle of the strip and turn around. The Zion a few cars in front of them by the time they got onto the Strip road proper, in the direction they were facing. As they drove their way down the Strip, Ivan turned on the car's MP3 player, without any interference from Tobias. Soon after turning it on, _Doctor Pressure_ by Mylo Vs Gloria Estefan began to play, eliciting some more enthusiasm from the drugged-up Russian.

"Woohooh, I love this fuckin' music, best trip soundtrack, best fuckin' trip soundtrack, homeboyyyyy!"

Tobias sighed and tried his best to distract Ivan from acting like an idiot for the whole trip. "Who was 'at bloke you were talkin' to? I've never seen him before. He the goon Zinny told me you'd be takin' along with you on this little jolly?" Tobias asked.

"Goon? He has a name, you know. It's Juri Karamazov!" Ivan answered, pronouncing the 'J' in 'Juri' as a 'Y'. "Real good man, he is, _good_ man! Y'know, he's a champion wrestler, and a true fucking American; in fact, he was the captain of the wrestling team in high school. An _American_ high school!"

"He seemed a bit quiet."

"Well, he prefers actions to words, y'know, kinda like you, except less bitchy!" Ivan remarked, teasingly. "Hey, hey, I'm just winding you up, homebolio! But yeah, he's quiet; I think it's 'cause he used to make a lot of... unfortunate comments about women in high school, but he grew out of that. We all think about and do stupid things at school, don't we, man? I mean, did you?"

"Yeah. When I was in primary school, some racist tosser called me a Paki bastard, for... existing, I think. And apparently didn't bother to check if I was actually from Pakistan or not. My mum's mum was, but that's as far as it goes, everyone else was Arab. O' course, racists aren't known for their intellect."

"Correct! _What_ a dumb-as-fuck _shithead_!" Ivan agreed. "So, what'd you do? Did you stuff him in the lockers?"

"'Course not. Nah, I broke both his legs with a cricket bat. Crippled him for life."

"...What's a Cricket bat?" The Americanised Ivan asked, confused and evidently having lost track of what Tobias was saying, due to a sudden zone-out.

"Never mind." Tobias dodged the question as he stopped at an intersection with a red light, Juri Karamazov's Zion already having passed through.

"Was he that 'goon'..." Ivan muttered to himself in disapproval of Zinny's terms of disparagement. "Honestly, what's Zinny's... problem sometimes? Let me tell you, man, Zinny... that woman scares me sometimes. Even if you ignore her screaming addiction. Like, you've heard what sort of shit she got up to back in Liberty City, haven't you?"

"Maybe, I _have_ been working there for over a year. What sort o' shit?"

"Well, I know you like to torture people to death, but Zinny, she used to just... torture people, but then let them live, so she could come back later and torture them some more. I heard that she loved to twist people's fingers around, and, and... apparently she once nailed this poor bastard's dick to a table, and threatened to pull him away if he didn't tell her where a crate of canteloupes was. That's right, fuckin' canteloupes, man! And then she _crucified_ the guy in a shed under the Broker Bridge!"

"Zinny did that?" Tobias requested confirmation, with no hint of surprise whatsoever. "I remember seein' the bugger on the news. It was around 2010, wasn't it, mate?"

"Yeah, it was... heh, I remember those days like it was yesterday. Vitali Rascalov was tearing up Kenny Petrovic's operations all over the fuckin' 'States, and I was just your average completely honest moneylender in Alderney; well, 'till Vitali made me a juicy offer, anyway. I'm still a completely legitimate businessman, just for the record. The police can't do shit to me, baby!"

"Yeah... sure they can't." Tobias 'assured' him, as he continued his path down the Strip, the light having turned green during their conversation.

"Actually, man, what were you doing in LC before you came here?"

"Assorted jobs, most of 'em involvin' killin'. Primarily for this Chinese bloke, Huang Lee was 'is name. Leader of the local Triad, after he bumped off the last geezer's heir. Spoilt little shit. 'Aven't 'eard from 'im in months, which means he's either doin' porridge or under eight feet of dirt."

"What do you mean, 'doing porridge'? What's porridge got to do with anything?"

"Means he's in the nick."

"Huh?"

Tobias sighed in irritation. "In prison!"

"Ooooh, riiiight! I get it now! How silly of me... or how silly of _you_, for expecting me to know your Limey terms on _**American**_ soil!"

"Go fuck yerself. I'm drivin'. I'll kill us."

"Woah, woah... okay. Just winding you up again, you miserable bastard."

Tobias irritatedly sighed once again, sharply followed by yet another cough and sniffle. He then found himself rubbing his eyes as he looked at his SatNav to see the next intersection that it insisted he turn left at, if the bright red line was any reliable indication of such.

"Hey, man, you okay?" Ivan asked, concerned. Not too concerned, though, just a little. Even after having discussed Zinny's history of torture, not to mention the events of last night, he was still quite chipper.

"Yeah. It's normal." Tobias said, nonchalantly.

"It's the fucking Acid, is what it is. I told you, you should lay off that shit for a while. I don't get it, how can you _not_ have bad trips all the time when you kill people for a living? I'd have thought that you'd have seen yourself been... savaged by giant land-squids or drowning in dark chocolate or some crazy shit like that."

"Because... I'm good at killing, and I enjoy killing. I carry out my function with pride."

"Your _'function_'? Jesus, you sound like a fucking robot!"

Tobias proceeded to shuffle about in his seat somewhat, as he sat back and placed one of his arms out of his open window. "People are like robots, the same way animals are like robots. We all strive to be automatons, following the same old tired routine, day in, day out. Animals eat, sleep, mate. We do those things, but what makes us unique is that we do other shit on top of that. Some people work at tedious office jobs, some people mow grass, some people fuck other people on a contractual basis. They do it 'cause it's nature's calling; it's just that some people are lucky enough to be selected for very lucrative things."

He stopped for a brief moment in the middle of his lengthy justification for sounding like a robot to check his watch and sniffle again. Then he continued. "Take me, I'm good at killing wankers who had it coming, and I get paid for it. I know this, so I accept the routine. It's people that try to deviate from nature's calling, people who think they're such a special little snowflake that they don't have to play by the rules, they're the ones who get fucked over in the end."

"What about those Anarchist guys, who think we should abolish all order or some shit?" Ivan finally asked, having been just looking around in confusion for a while.

Tobias prepared to justify himself again as he finally reached the intersection he had to turn at, stopping the car, waiting for the green light. "See, they're just deluding themselves into thinking they have independence, but they don't. They don't realise that they can't abolish order. If you tear down order, it'll just come back and shit on your face."

Ivan simply sat there, baffled, slurping at his shake some more. He was baffled enough to not realise that the cup was empty now, as indicated by the very loud slurping noises suddenly going quiet. "Ooookay... so... I'm kinda following it, kinda not, let me just get this straight... are you saying you believe in fate? And that poor shmucks like you and me, we're forever doomed to do what we do and we can't do jack-shit about it?"

"Yeah."

"Man, the people who make Acid have a _lot_ to answer for..."

"So do the blokes who make Ecstasy."

Finally, as they wrapped that up (Ivan failing to come up with a retort that wouldn't make him look like an idiot), the light turned green, and Tobias proceeded to turn his car to the left, driving across the junction without incident; the drugged-up Ivan seemed a bit impressed, perhaps because he was expecting the next step in the string of bad events.

"Say, I... I just wanna ask you something, Tobias, my man. Something I've been thinking about lately. People have been telling me you were with the SAS, in Kuwait. Were you?"

"I was in Kuwait, yeah. But I was just a regular, in the Royal Marines."

"So how come everyone's been sayin' you were-."

"They must figure that I must have been with the SAS since I'm so good at killin'. Anyway, that's all I'm tellin' you about Kuwait."

"Why?"

"Fuck you, that's why."

"Oooookay... on second thoughts, let's just... stay... quiet until we get there. Yes, let's do that. Heheh... ah."


	5. Pound Cake, Part 2

**Las Venturas Municipal Impoundment Lot, Spinybed, Las Venturas, Clarence County, Robada**

**09:19, April 3rd, 2013**

* * *

"Eu te disse, ele não comprar qualquer porra de uvas!" shouted the man down the telephone. The Afro-Brazilian man, with the tight black ponytail, moustache and grimy-looking boiler suit, in the even grimier-looking office-in-a-glorified-shed at the vehicle Pound. Much like Tobias' bedroom, it had those slits of light coming in through the blinds, except these served the highlight the dust in the air, getting spun about by the fan attached to the ceiling.

As he was busying himself with that, Tobias and Ivan Bytchkov opened the mostly-transparent door on the opposite end of the 'office' and strolled in confidently, confidence being in strange abundance as they got to work that day. As they walked right up to the desk, the man on the phone tried to hurry up his conversation, but seemed no less annoyed with whatever it was he was talking about.

"Eu tinha os meus meninos olhando para ele, não uma vez que eles vêem uma única uva! Por que diabos você está me perguntando sobre uvas, de qualquer maneira? Esqueça as malditas uvas! **Bom dia!**" He finished, slamming the phone down on the receiver. Finally, he looked up and changed his expression and tone to a much more affable one. "Gentlemen, my apologies! Don't mind that little... altercation. Angry motorists who think they can park in the middle of the road, shit like that. How can I help you?"

Tobias moved his arm forward as if he was about to begin gesturing as he spoke, but Ivan managed to stop him with a counter-gesture: one index finger raised in his direction, followed by him making some more gestures which Tobias translated as 'let me do the talking'. So it was agreed: Ivan would do the talking.

"Hello, my main man. We need to talk to the boss, Mr. Vasco Vargas. Where is he?"

The man at the desk chuckled. "Well, 'my main man', you're looking at him."

"Wait, _you're_ Vasco Vargas?" Ivan said, surprised. Tobias and Vargas simply looked on, also in surprise, at how Ivan could be surprised by this. "I was kind of expecting you to be-"

"...White?" Vargas finished it for him.

"Well... yeah. N-n-now don't get me wrong, I-I'm not being racist or anything, I have nothing against black people! In fact, I fucking love black people! You guys, you're like... my homies! We're all homies here, right? We all grew up in the 'hood, and had to pop caps in asses to get ahead, right? Oh shit, um... ignore all that, I- wait, except for the first part! About me not being racist! I'm the most... non-racist man in the world!"

Meanwhile, Tobias was busy facepalming in embarrassment at Ivan's sheer awkwardness.

"Look, amigo, just forget about it. It's cool." Vargas responded, less out of forgiveness and more out of a willingness to prevent the panicking Russian man from embarrassing himself any further.

"We're lookin' for a motor that was impounded 'ere last night. A Pegassi Infernus, black/red paint, golden trim." Tobias spoke up, impatiently.

"Y-yeah, what he said." Ivan affirmed.

"Well... you certainly look and act like the sort that would own a _distinctive_ ride like that." Vargas shot back at Ivan, as he surveyed his rather gaudy attire. It was obvious he was getting suspicious of the unlikely duo already, if his slightly tense tone and furrowed brow were any indication.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nada, nada..." He played innocent, seemingly absorbing Ivan's suspicion and flung it back at him. "Can I just ask, though, how did you know my name already?"

"Uh... well, I was about to say, you're very well-known around these parts."

"I am? For what?"

"For inf- for being a pillar of the community."

"Haha... I wish, amigo. What's your name?"

"Iva-" he began, before being nudged on the shoulder by Tobias. A _de facto_ criminal giving out their real name to a known police informant; not very professional at all. Neither was making up an alias on the spot, but it had to do. "Erm... Ivor Baddic."

"I see... how 'bout you?" The sceptical Brazilian asked again, looking at Tobias. He wasn't much better.

"Tony... Pound."

"...An Englishman who looks like an Arab, and a Russian whose suit matches the paint job on his 400K-dollar supercar... not something I see every day. Well, amigos, I have the car you're looking for. Come with me."

Sure enough, the extremely untrustworthy (for a criminal, that is) impoundment boss feigned a friendly smile as he lead them out the splintered wooden door on his side of the office. The three of them soon found themselves back out in the hot, blinding sun, on the other side of the metal boom barrier that (theoretically) prevented vehicles from just bursting in. The smell from the industrial district of Spinybed filled their nostrils again, causing Ivan to discreetly cringe. Tobias also cringed, but for different reasons, the smell reminding him of desert battlefields. He proved much better at hiding it than the urbanised, wealthy Ivan.

"The car you're lookin' for is on the far side of the Pound, in Lot D. All the way over there." Vargas pointed to their right, in the direction of the large, dusty field of assorted automobiles, fenced off with chickenwire. "I would show you myself, but, uh... I have to make a phone call."

"Oookay, well, good luck with that, homie!"

"Si... and good luck to you, _amigos_." Vargas said, not without a slight hint of malevolent intent towards the two... or benevolent intent, if one was to look at it from a different point of view. He simply walked back into his office and very gently, closed the door behind him. By the time that was finished, Tobias had already walked about ten paces towards the objective, while Ivan was still standing there like a lemon.

"Toby! Toby..." Ivan pleaded him to stop for a moment, as he jogged over to him; not a great image from a person with his physique.

"What?"

"Listen, man..." He sort-of whispered. "We need to get out of here, that guy's onto us already! He's going to call the fucking cops on our ass!"

"No, we need those bloody tapes. You an' me ain't goin' anywhere 'till we 'ave 'em." Tobias declared, beginning his path to his destination.

Ivan followed him, reluctantly, stopping constantly but moving forward awkwardly whenever Tobias wouldn't follow suit; that is to say, every time. "But... b-but if the police find out what we're doing..."

"Relax, mate. Juri's on watch outside, inn'e?"

"Well... yeah, but-"

"Look, mate. Just fuckin' bribe 'em. That's what you usually do, yeah? If all else fails, we kill 'em. Well, I kill 'em."

"But you can't just kill cops, man!"

"Sure you can. They're mortal humans like you an' me."

"I didn't mean it like that, I meant... gah, fuck, we are fucked... fucked, fucked, fucked..."

"Just calm down, shut yer cakehole an' follow me. He wouldn't 'ave figured us out if you 'adn't acted like you knew who he was when you shouldn't."

"Well... fuck!"

The pair of them had this little conversation regarding their imminent fates as they wandered down the Pound, through the heat waves radiating above the dusty ground. They passed all manner of vehicles, ranging from ancient, beaten-up Sabres and plain-as-you-can-get Staniers to tiny, modern Dilletantes and dirty Burrito vans (as in, the van known as a Burrito, not vans carrying the Mexican food, also known as a Burrito). Some of the cars were in pristine condition, probably left in parking lot of one of the Strip's casinos by drunken tourists. Others, including an Asterope with an extremely crumpled front end, were... less so. Also probably the work of drunken tourists, who, some would observe, make up over half of Las Venturas' population on any given day.

As they wandered closer to Lot D, indicated by a tiny sign on a post, Tobias slowed down to allow himself time to sniffle and rub his eyes again. It was then, as he raised his head to the sky following his eye rub, he noticed something that should be a meteorological impossibility.

He couldn't look directly at the sun, even with sunglasses, but he could see it in his peripheral vision. The sun had a pair of large black spots with smaller white spots inside them, in the same place eyes would be on a human face. The sun's 'face' bore a wary squint, as if to say it was watching the assassin. And sure enough, it was, as Tobias found out when he raised his hand and began slowly moving it from side to side; the Sun's 'pupils' were following it.

"The sun's pretty suspicious of you, isn't it?" Ivan suddenly spoke up.

Tobias looked back down at the Russian, who was now standing still also. But there was something else wrong with the situation, besides the fact that Ivan appeared to be aware of the Sun's eyes. That 'something else' was the oversized Praying Mantis sitting on Ivan's shoulder, almost as big as his head.

Tobias didn't say anything, for he had experienced this sort of thing before; saying something would make him sound like a maniac... well, more of a maniac. Instead, he slammed his eyes shut and tried to zone out for a moment. He succeeded; the result of which being a rather brief but very colourful disco-floor-type pattern flashing all over his vision, finishing off with a light, almost electrical sensation. When he opened his eyes again, the Mantis had disappeared.

"...Could you repeat that?" He asked Ivan, still visibly trying to highlight reality.

"I said, 'are you okay, man?'" Ivan replied, one hundred percent genuinely.

Tobias glanced back up at the sun; sure enough, the 'eyes' had disappeared too. "...Flashback..." He muttered to himself. "Yeah, I'm good. Let's just get this shit done."

"Ooookay, if you say so... I would ask what a 'flashback' is, but honestly, I don't want to know." The pair of them began the final leg of their walk into Lot D, and began scanning the area for Ivan's beloved car. They almost reached the fence at the very end of the Pound when Ivan looked over to the path on his left. "Holy shit, there it is!" Then he began running.

"Aggghhhh... oh shit, oh shit!" He panicked, as he got a closer look at his red, black and gold Infernus. As he implied, it was quite a bit different from before. As Tobias walked in to get a closer look himself, he noticed the battered front of the vehicle; one half of the front bumper mangled, the lights and windscreen smashed, both door mirrors missing, and a rather large paint scratch stretching across the entire car. "Bozhe moy... the fuck did he do to you, girl? You poor thing..." He lamented, as he almost stroked the scratched part on the bonnet, as if he was trying to comfort an injured human, instead of an inanimate automobile. He quickly turned back to Tobias to emphasize his extreme displeasure. "That fucking psycho... just ruins everything! Killed fifty-three good men, stole the Emerald, and now... he _damaged_ my car! The fucking cheek! Y'know what, people like Trevor Phillips are the reason we can't have nice things in this world!"

"Right... please tell me I'm having another flashback..." Tobias said to himself, not bothering to hide it from Ivan. "It's just a car, mate."

Ivan seemed to completely ignore Tobias as he continued to inspect the damage done to his beloved car in a rather melancholy fashion. Tobias _did_ get a response, though...

"Yes, you _are_ having another flashback, _no_ it's not just a car, and _yes_ the sun was more than a little bit suspicious of you!" A voice with what resembled a light Brummie accent spoke up behind Tobias. He turned back, as anyone would, but there was no-one. No police officers or muggers or hippies wishing to lecture him. He only saw three vehicles; a dirty blue Ruiner muscle car, an even dirtier white Bobcat pickup, and an only slightly dirty brown Emperor sedan.

Tobias duly turned back, only to have the mysterious voice start up again. "Oi, listen, will you? Yes, I know you're annoyed because you drank too much coffee right after your last trip and you didn't think you'd have to work today, but for the love of all that is holy, you _must_ listen!"

The assassin, bothered and still watching Ivan inspect his car, turned back once again, and saw yet another thing that should, by all means, be impossible. The blue Ruiner he saw was blinking over its lights, another thing that shouldn't have eyes having eyes. Not to mention it was fidgeting around a bit, by itself, like it was trying to get settled in an uncomfortable seat. "Y'know what you need, Toby? You need more power, like me. I have _all_ the power! Then perhaps you wouldn't worry so much about not fitting your place in life!" The Ruiner said. Yes, the car was talking to him, using its grille as a mouth.

"Well, that's an original answer." The Emperor suddenly came to life just like the Ruiner and spoke to 'him', in a much more refined, almost posh voice. "You know sometimes you need other things, like... handling and traction control... and comfort, you unsophisticated oaf."

"Yes, and sometimes you need to have a sense of direction and not go off in the wrong lane because your wheel isn't fitted on properly because you were too busy sniffing your polished engine to notice." The Ruiner retorted.

"That was not my fault, that was the mechanic. His tools were no good. And let's not forget the time you stalled when going up a hill and went down in smoke because you were too obsessed with 'poweeeeeer!'"

Just as the ever-increasingly delirious Tobias had been expecting, the Bobcat in between the two bickering cars finally came to life, this one speaking with a younger and more authentic Brummie accent. "Guys, _**guys!**_ Can we _please_ not argue, and just move on? We only have a few minutes before Toby here snaps back to his senses!"

"Alright, alright, moving on..." The Ruiner said, irritated. "Toby, there are too many people in your world that are trying to hammer in their petty codes and morals, and I'm afraid, I really am, that you're going to crack, but you're better than that! There's no-one out there like you, you only need more power! Power, man, power!"

"What are you talking about, man?" Said the Emperor. "Nobody's trying to hammer in any codes to his head, he's doing just fine. Nobody's stupid enough to waste their time trying to understand him, it's a futile effort. If he vies for more power, he'll try and become an... emperor or something he's not. That's not his place."

"I know just what you need to do!" Said the Bobcat, definitively. "Your problem is that moron, that former friend of yours in Kuwait. He's still out there, and he's going to poke away at your thick skull until he's dead, and no-one can help, they'd betray you, too. The only reason people don't constantly betray you is because you walk out on them, first. That's what you did to Huang Lee, and have you heard anything about him since then? Of course not!"

Tobias was, needless to say, quite offended that this hallucination of a talking pickup truck was questioning his loyalty (while, paradoxically, also praising him for walking out on his employers). But, again, from past experience, he knew that talking to back to it would hardly help matters. That didn't stop him from _almost_ breaking his silence this one time to shut it up, tell it that it's not real and so it doesn't really mean anything... of course, that never did any good in his early years of taking Acid, anyway. He remembered, retro Hippies in the eighties and nineties often told him about how Acid changed the way they see the world, permanently. Tobias was no exception. He knew this, but he embraced it, at the time; after all, even he knew he was never the most mentally stable person in the world. As his resistance grew, his willingness to embrace shrank, but he would never be able to undo the early stages; not that he'd want to.

"Tobias, my man, what the fuck are you doing? I need your help!" Tobias could hear Ivan speaking in a slightly distorted tone, as if he was talking over radio.

"Oh, cock, the rozzers are coming! You'd better scarper! From _all_ these people..." The Emperor concluded the speech of the three cars. Tobias found himself blacking out his own vision to take a brief visit to the disco floor realm again, slamming his eyes shut and watching his 'vision'. When he opened them again, he found himself facing back at Ivan, the latter grasping his shoulders.

"Tobias, say something, homeboy!" Ivan said again, now with his normal tone of voice.

Tobias blinked a few times to try getting back into reality properly this time. He briefly looked back over his shoulder, and to his relief, the three cars had reverted back to their inanimate state.

"...Somethin'."

"Smartass! Listen, Juri called while you were zoned out, he says the police are here, a whole van of them, with body armour and fucking dogs! They sent two officers to scout ahead, we better make this quick!"

Tobias didn't verbally respond to Ivan's urging, instead opting to simply turn around and get to it. While he was busying himself listening to figments of his drug-addled mind, Ivan had opened up the driver's door to his car... or ripped it off, apparently, since the butterfly door was disconnected and on the dusty ground.

"Can you believe it?! That fucker... she's falling apart, man! _**Look at her!**_ The door, it just... gah! You'd better make that little hockey-playing, maple-syrup-chugging, inferiority-complex-to-these-great-United-States-shit _suffer_ for this transgression!" Ivan went off, sounding quite a bit angrier than usual; something that would tend to happen once in a blue moon, as they say.

"Really, Ivan. It's just a car. Count yourself lucky you're still alive." Tobias tried to inject some sense into him as he walked over and stuck his head down under the steering wheel, noticing a plate on the floor. The screws that would've been in the corners of the plate were instead lying next to it, courtesy of the screwdriver Ivan had retrieved from the glovebox. However, the plate was still there, evidently quite tightly stuck in since Ivan couldn't muster the strength necessary to pull it out.

"No, Tobias, it's _not_ 'just a car'! You don't understand how important this fucking car is to me! When I hit it big, when my wife left me, this car was there for me, so I didn't get lonely at the top like all those other rich assholes! She may be Italian-made, but she is America's gift to me! And... now look at her! I can only hope he didn't... do... _things_ to her, as well! **Arrrrrrggghhhh, fucking Canadians!**"

All Tobias did was sigh with disgust, trying his best to ignore Ivan's rather unusual relationship with his car as he grabbed the small handle on the side of the plate and applied all the force he could muster to his forearms. It took him about twenty seconds of applied strength, contorting his face into a reddened, screwed-up grimace, until he finally pulled the plate out with a 'snap'. His face returning to normal, he tossed the plate out into the path and surveyed the device concealed underneath; a set of simple controls, like those on an old tape player.

"I figured it would be more convenient if you could just listen to the-" before Ivan could finish his sentence, he looked behind himself briefly, catching sight of a pair of beige-uniformed LVPD officers walking down the path they had arrived on. One of them was a white man with a red (orange) crew cut, the other was a shorter East Asian-looking woman with a tight ponytail. "Oh fuck, the cops!" He frantically whispered. "You stay here, Toby, I'll go talk to them. Remember, you don't kill cops, you buy them."

The male police officer could be heard conversating as he and his colleague approached the duo's position. "...And so the guy said to me 'how the fuck did you know that I detonated that bomb when I was nowhere near it, and why do you care, because literally nobody got hurt!' and I was about to stun him again, when it hit me... how _did_ we know that? Either there was some mystery eyewitness who knew the guy and ran to the station to tell us right away, or we're hiring fucking wizards!"

"Yeah, that is some weird shit, ain't it? Y'know what else is weird? How we just let that other asshole off with a disproportionately tiny bribe after he crushed an entire parking lot with a fucking Haul Truck!" Replied his female colleague.

"The chief let that pass? Jesus Christ, I knew we were corrupt, but not _**that **_corrupt! And I thought the bastards in Los Santos had it bad... maybe if we arrest the motherfucker responsible for last night's massacre, we could make it up to the taxpayers... wait a second, is that..."

The male police officer just noticed the leg of Ivan's distinctive attire pass into the main path, followed shortly by the rest of him; there was no doubt in the officer's mind now.

"Hey, Ivan, my Ruskie pal! What are you doing here?"

"...Officer Boson?" Ivan muttered to himself in disbelief, as he frantically power-walked over to him to whisper, equally frantically, to his face "Shut up, shut up, shut up! You and... what's-her-name over there..."

"Officer Nishidake."

"Yeah, whatever, you two need to leave right now, and take your armed squad and your dogs with you!"

"Wh... why? Didn't you tell us about your arrangement the other day, at the station? You know, the one with-" Officer Boson said, disconcertingly loudly.

"Be fucking quiet! First, I never said you'd be involved, and second, that guy I told you about, that Limey, he's right around the corner, and if he finds out-"

"Oi!" Tobias shouted out, having predictably managed to overhear Boson's admittance to knowing Ivan for some reason. "You know that copper, mate? What bloody arrangement?!"

"Nothing! I don't know what he's talking about! I was never at the station, I never even met this bastard, who the fuck is he? I don't know, 'cause I've never met him!" Ivan shouted back to him, to save face.

"Nishi, hang back here." Boson said to his female colleague.

"Sure thing." She confidently replied.

"You still haven't told us what's going on here..." Boson brought the conversation back to Ivan, as he wandered over to Tobias' location, Ivan still trying (and failing) to stop him. "Wait a second..." He said, spotting Ivan's beloved Infernus. "That's _your_ car... the same car we saw fleeing from the bloodbath last night! Holy shit, I didn't even notice until now! The fuck's going on!?"

"Now, I know this looks bad, but I can explain..."

"Ivan, come over 'ere, I finally got this bloody thing to work." Tobias called over, still with most of his body sticking awkwardly inside the car.

"Alright! Look, Boson, I'll explain later, you need to go, now! Go on, away with you! Otvali!" Ivan panicked and spluttered out as he made his way over to Tobias, eventually turning his back to him. Boson promptly ignored Ivan's request and followed him over.

Meanwhile, Tobias pressed the marked 'play' button on the in-built tape player on Ivan's 'black box', which proceeded to unleash the very distinctive growls of Trevor Phillips, in crackled eighties-era quality.

"**Grrrrrrgggggghhhh, fucking Rascalov!** Thinks he can fuck me over, huh? Well, I'll write him a **fucking complaint letter!**" From the way he said it, he was quite obviously clenching his teeth together. This was soon followed by the sound of a phone being dialed.

"_**Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!**_" He apparently screamed down his phone in bloodlust. "Ron! Ronald Jakowski! The deal with those Russians was a **fucking set-up!** A member of the Rascalov dynasty was behind it, the brother of that glasses-wearing asshole that fucked me over in 2007! Did you know it was a Rascalov!? Because if you did, when I get back to Sandy Shores, I will **shove a fucking bullet in your penis!** Anyway, I murdered fifty-three of their goons, so I feel... **much... **_**better**_**!** And I've taken a **worthless piece of green garbage for a souvenir!** Now go out and get me a **fucking Pizza** for when I get back! Good Pizza, none of that store-bought shit! ...I don't care if there's no Pizza places in town, fucking drive to LS if you have to! You have plenty of time, it'll take hours for me to get back! If I starve tonight, it's penis-bullets for you! Now I've gotta abandon this car... huh? ...Ah, plain Mozzarella, no fancy bullshit!"

With that, Tobias stopped the recording, having gotten the lead he needed. "Sandy Shores... well, now we know where the bugger is. Ivan, could you look up a bloke called Ronald Jakowski?"

"'Scuse me for interrupting, but who's 'the bugger'?" Officer Boson... interrupted.

"Well, um..." Ivan began to answer, seeing an opportunity to get the heat off him. "...Y-you see, that guy on the recording, that was Trevor Phillips. He's the Canadian asshole who murdered all my... I mean, those other Russian guys at the Old Strip last night. He's the guy you're looking for, not me."

"Trevor Phillips... holy shit, Ivan, you've really stumbled upon something here!" Boson complimented him, conveniently forgetting about Ivan's warnings. He showed even more disregard for his warnings as he whipped out a notepad-and-pen from his belt. "Where'd you say he was, again? Sandy Shores? That's across the border in San Andreas, some shithole in the desert, infested by Meth-addicted rednecks. And who was the guy he was talking to? We're going to have some fun with this prick!"

As he was busy endangering his life, Tobias got to work being the reason why he was endangering his life. He unbuttoned the top half of his shirt to retrieve his concealed Heavy Pistol, before taking out a suppressor from his pocket and attaching it to the barrel. With Boson still gleefully going on about how screwed Trevor was, Tobias practically slithered out of the car, regaining his a professional standing posture, swivelling round and pointing his pistol directly at Boson's forehead.

Ivan held back in surprise as Tobias pressed the suppressor against the police officer's head, as Boson was 'pushed' backwards onto the dusty path, with Tobias walking forward. "Woah, woah... woah... easy, easy. There's no need for this." He attempted to reason with him, but to no avail.

"You say anythin' about Mr. Phillips to yer colleagues, mate, and we'll find out if any o' these cars can fit a corpse in the boot. Is there anyone with you?"

"Um... y-yeah, there is... Officer Nishidake, she's around the corner."

"Call the bird over 'ere."

"Uh... Nishi! Nishi, come over here right now! It's important!"

"Ivan, get yer gun out. Don't fuck around."

Ivan looked as if he was about to object, but found himself hesitantly slipping his gun, a gold-plated Pistol, out from under his red jacket anyways. Meanwhile, the crunching of shoes against the dusty terrain could be heard as 'Nishi' came around the corner. As soon as she saw her colleague at gunpoint, she raised her own pistol, to which Ivan raised his, creating a little Mexican Stand-off.

"Shit! You, put the gun down, right now! We're police, you can't fuck with us! Put it down and maybe we'll let both of you off with a week in a shit-stained cell!" She, quite hot-headedly, tried to get them to back down.

"I fuck with whoever interferes with my work." A completely unfazed Tobias replied, not concerned with the threats of arrest or even summary execution from the police. "Now, Nishidake, here's what's gonna 'appen. You call yer mates over by the entrance an' tell 'em to piss off. If you say anythin' other than what I told you, or you try runnin' for it, yer mate 'ere won't eat a doughnut again. 'Cause 'e'll be dead."

"Nishi, d-don't listen to this prick, ...h-he's a fucking psychopath! He'll kill me anyway, and he'll kill you, too!" Boson resisted, his resistance met with additional pressure applied directly to his forehead.

This situation continued, completely unresolved for a painstaking two minutes, Nishi and Boson sweating with fear, Tobias' face still flat and cold, his gun still imprinting a pink circle on Boson's forehead. Ivan, meanwhile, also shaking and sweating with fear (and the heat, to a lesser extent), retrieved his phone with his free hand and attempted to call Juri. But after three attempts, he got no response.

"Toby, Juri's not answering, I think the cops got him."

"Eh?" Tobias answered, _very_ briefly letting his guard down as he cocked his head to his left slightly, leaving Nishi mostly out of his vision for a moment. Unfortunately, it was all the time she needed to make a dash back out onto the main path, leaving clouds of dust in her wake. This very obvious getaway immediately alerted Tobias, as he pulled the trigger on his pistol before Boson had the opportunity to react as well, not even looking him directly in the eye as he did so. The suppressed gunshot caused him to drop dead immediately, landing on his back; neither Tobias nor Ivan could 'admire' the damage done as the view was blocked by the front of his head, the only indication of his death being the large pool of blood that formed on the dusty ground, and they had no time or reason to turn his corpse over.

In fact, the pool of blood hadn't even formed by the time Tobias had made his way over to the path to deal with Officer Nishi. She was quite fast on her feet, since the dust clouds she had created were still thick as Tobias barely caught sight of her as she took cover on the other side of the row of cars; he tried to shoot her in the leg before she could get behind them, but to no effect besides making sparks fly off the car she was hiding behind.

"All units, move in, move in! I got an officer down, repeat, _**officer down**_**!** **I need some fucking backup!**" Nishi screamed down her walkie-talkie as she took cover. Unfortunately, in Tobias' mind, the combination of her hot-headedness, faith in the law's invincibility and failure to acknowledge the giant gaps underneath the cars filling the Pound as an exposure of inexperience. He quickly got into a prone position, essentially 'falling' down onto his front only to stop the fall with his hands, and looked down the Red Dot Sight on his modded pistol.

Sure enough, she was still anticipating being shot from the end of the row of vehicles, completely unaware as Tobias shot her in the foot, eliciting a pained scream and a fall to the ground, backwards, remaining behind the row. For the fraction of a second she was still capable-of-survival while completely on the ground, she looked as if she would request mercy on Tobias' part, before he shot her again, in the heart. It didn't kill her instantly, but the shock rendered her unconscious, and judging from her very own pool of blood, she would be dead in minutes, Tobias observed.

Tobias got back onto his feet, dusted his hands down and looked back to Ivan... only to instead see an patch of empty dirt were he was previously standing. Looking to the left, back at the Infernus, he witnessed Ivan in the driver's seat as he frantically tried to hot-wire his beloved automobile.

"C'mon, c'mon... don't hang me out to dry..." he muttered to himself in somewhat off-putting fashion.

Tobias held his gun down and jogged over to him. "We're gonna 'ave a problem if you don't get a move on." He informed Ivan, in an attempt to kick him out of his irrational love for his car. This attempt was unsuccessful.

"Nyet! I refuse to leave without her!"

"Yer a fuckin' muppet, you know that?"

Ivan was too busy concentrating, frantically, as usual, as he continued to mutter to himself. Before Tobias could make another attempt to get him going, he heard the barking of a dog in the distance. He looked back, popping his head over the top of the car behind him to take a look at the entrance, and sure enough, he could barely make out a trio of police officers, accompanied by two dogs resembling German Shepherds, standing and planning out their sweep of the Pound.

Tobias stopped to think. He could just go over to them and shoot them all dead, simple as, but unless he wanted to hang around all day, fighting off waves and waves of coppers who attacked with increasing ferocity and resources the more of them were mowed down until his own inevitable demise, he'd have to find a different means. The infinitely more convenient alternative meant getting rid of them in such a way that they'd be unable to call in backup. This meant splitting them up and killing them separately, ensuring that none of the remaining officers would know of their colleagues' unceremonious death.

Leaving Ivan to whatever fate he expected to get by just sitting where he was, Tobias made his way to the path on the other end of their row; the one they had not yet trodden on. Crouching down to sneak along the side of the cars, he forward-rolled across another dirt track to reach the previous row of cars, and took cover behind a dirty Burrito van. Looking over to his left, in the eastern lot of the Pound, he noticed a black Stratum estate car/station wagon, which looked to be in pristine condition; he guessed that the car alarm would still work.

His guesses were proven true when he raised his pistol again and 'swooped' out of cover briefly to take a shot at the Stratum's windows. As soon as the bullet shattered the glass, the high-pitched alarm went off, which almost immediately created a rather unpleasant sound when combined with the ferocious barking of dogs as their attention was drawn to the loud noise. Taking a close look through the windows on the van's back doors, out through the windscreen, he could barely make out the bobbing heads of the three police officers moving in the general direction of the blaring alarm; seemingly being savvy enough to avoid splitting up.

By the time they arrived at the vehicle in question, however, one of them seemed to assume that Tobias was an idiot who wanted to kill them all at the same time, failing to see his own idiocy when he split off from his two colleagues and headed down to the end of the path Tobias happened to be taking cover next to. As the officer, armed with a pump shotgun, walked right past the Tobias' cover-van, Tobias thwacked him in the face with his hand, grabbed his gun and used it to swing him around behind the van, smashing his face into the back door and creating a dent. To finish him off, he quickly took his pistol to the back of the ever-so-momentarily silenced officer's head and silenced him permanently. By means of a splattering bits of his face on the sides of the van's back windows as most of his head ended up smashing through it, resting there awkwardly.

Unfortunately, Tobias had failed to take notice of the police dog that decided to follow this particular officer's lead, for some reason, and by now was rushing at Tobias' back, pattering along quite loudly and leaving slobber on the ground in its wake. Naturally, something making this much noise could not go unnoticed; Tobias was barely able to turn around and get off three shots aimed vaguely in the dog's general direction, as it pounced wildly at his face. At least one of the shots connected, since the dog's lifeless body proceeded to smack him in the face and send him smashing into the back of the van, just as the officer had done before him.

It seemed too much noise had been made, as by the time Tobias had recovered from that bump to the head, another officer was heading his way. He already knew that if this one found the bodies, he'd have reason to call for backup. The dead officer was thankfully already in an ideal position to be hidden; all Tobias did was grab the corpse by the feet and tipped the entire body into the back of the van, via the smashed window. As for the dead dog, that had to be haphazardly thrown into the back by the collar. Problem was, this caused the van to rock about, giving the approaching officer even more warning that somebody was there.

In order to delay his impending detection, he sprinted over to the car next in line and got into a prone position using the same fast-drop method as before, grabbing the bottom of the car and sliding himself under, for he would surely be detected under the van.

As he saw the officer leave a trail of dust clouds as he finally reached Tobias' former location, he grabbed hold of the van's underside and slid himself over. He waited, pre-emptively grabbing the van's front bumper, being forced to retract his grip and suck on his finger for a moment after accidentally touching the searing hot metal of the van's license plate. As he heard the noise of glass being shuffled around in the back of the Burrito, he grabbed the bumper again, this time making sure only to touch the insulated plastic, and pulled himself out into a crouching position.

The second officer had just noticed the two corpses that Tobias had hid in the back and, like most non-assassins, found himself rather shocked, leaving him wide open for attack. As Tobias was back on his feet, now on the other side of the van's windscreen, he simply head-shot the distracted cop. The bullet went right through the windscreen and burst his eye, creating a miniature blood fountain, and also forced him to spin 180 degrees before dropping dead, which only made things messier.

It seemed that by this time, the third and last surviving (human) member of the search team decided to try something new; when he looked over and saw his colleague drop dead in front of the van, he decided not to call for backup; Tobias had anticipated coming across a particularly cocky officer who wouldn't call for backup, but he had to make sure. On the other hand, this officer was armed with a sub machine gun, and decided to be smarter about dealing with Tobias than the other two were, simply shooting his weapon at Tobias were he stood.

Tobias had to crouch down and bound along at fast pace in-between the cars as sparks went flying above him, courtesy of the bulletholes the third officer was leaving in the cars. He even made a few more car alarms go off from all the damage he was doing. But Tobias knew from his own military experience that automatic weapons don't tend to last long when fired full auto, and sure enough, the shooting abruptly stopped by the time Tobias had gotten halfway down the row.

He took cover behind another car and did his usual routine and swooping round to shoot the guy in the head... only this time, nothing came out of his gun's barrel. The only sound his gun made when he pulled the trigger was that horrible 'click' sound.

"...Shit!" Tobias quite rightly muttered to himself as he realised that he didn't think to bring any extra ammunition with him to the Pound; he may be a professional, but sometimes being a good professional will get to someone's head.

To make matters worse for him, he neglected to take notice of what happened to the other police dog; the last he saw it, it went off to investigate the far end of the Stratum's lot by itself. But now he knew exactly where it was; it was running right up to his position, too low to get hit by its master's bullets, and as Tobias was fumbling about searching for extra ammo, the dog stuck itself into Tobias' hiding place and clamped its jaw down on his leg, hard. If that didn't sound painful enough for him, it happened to be the same leg that got shot the night before, the leg that he was supposed to be taking care of. It was this extra pain boost, combined with the fact that this particular dog may as well have been on steroids, that effectively immobilized the assassin as the dog dragged him out into the dusty path.

The remaining police officer seized his opportunity and ran over to Tobias as he thrashed about in his agony, attempting to pull the clingy canine off of his leg. Before he could go through with the whole 'you are under arrest' routine, his quadrupedal partner was shot, three times, seemingly from out of nowhere, and wound up being nothing more than a weight on top of Tobias' chest. The officer looked to his left, and lo and behold, Ivan Bytchkov stood there, shaking as usual, his gold-plated Pistol smoking. It seemed clear to everyone involved that Ivan had been mingling with local law enforcement for some reason, so instead of arresting Ivan on the spot, the officer turned to him, distressed, and said:

"...What the fuck, Ivan?! You have any idea how many pounds of Coke that dog has ingested in his line of work!? You little shit, I thought we had a deal!"

This had the unfortunate side-effect of distracting the officer from the still-moving Tobias, who threw the dog's dead body off his now-slightly-bloodied shirt and forced his right fist directly into the back of the officer's right ankle. This burst of pain allowed Tobias to reach up to the officer's belt and grab his standard-issue Stun Gun; a much more routine police tool, but effective nonetheless. Tobias pulled the trigger, sending a jolt of electricity into the officer's thigh, which quite quickly reduced him to a twitching, spasming mess, bashed against the car in front from the shock, and now laying on the ground... twitching and spasming.

"...Oi, come 'ere and give me a fuckin' hand!" Tobias yelled out as he tried to force himself up to his feet. Ivan duly came rushing over, grabbing Tobias' arm and pulling him back up. As he was doing this, Tobias managed to grab the officer's dropped SMG, and once he had literally regained his standing, he went about making mincemeat of the spasming officer's head, by means of filling it with several SMG bullets. Three seconds later, Tobias stood in a slightly crooked stance, as he and Ivan looked at the bloody mess the former had created on the ground, easily surpassing the previous killings that day.

"T... To-Tobias, what did I fucking tell you, man?! You don't kill cops, you buy them!" Ivan chided him.

"Fuck off, mate. I knew that already!" It was at this point that Tobias' bottled-up sense of superiority over the common man began to manifest itself. Lugging his damaged leg along like it had a ball-and-chain attached to it, he began a little tirade.

"...But I didn't 'ave a fuckin' choice! If I didn't kill that Boson bloke, he'd 'ave spilled the beans about Trevor's location, and we'd be fucked up the Khyber! An' let me tell you, mate, this is **nothin'!** 'Ow many coppers has Trevor Phillips killed? Or Tommy Vangelico, or... what's-his-name, that Serb who you keep goin' on about, 'ow many coppers did they kill, dozens, 'undreds? I'm a fuckin' _**Angel**_ compared to them! Plus, when I _do_ 'ave to kill coppers, I don't run amok, shooting everything in sight while standin' out in the open like Jack-fuckin'-Howitzer! **I'm a fuckin' professional! **_**The**_** fuckin' professional!** You, on the other 'and, is a white-collar prick with a fetish for his fuckin' motor! I've been puttin' up with your shit because of my consummate professionalism! But who the fuck d'you think you are, tellin' me how to do my job?! **Go fuck a duck!**"

The pair of them stood in silence for nearly two minutes as Ivan processed this sudden outburst, the last thing he expected from such a previously stoic person as Tobias. He tried to say something, but the words effectively got stuck in his mouth. Then that classic warning sound filled the air, the sound of police sirens.

"...Thank yer for savin' my fuckin' life. Now, shall we get goin'?" Tobias finally said, in a drastic mood whiplash. Not that he had changed his tone at all, it was still extremely aggressive. As most would probably do when talking to a trained assassin, Ivan agreed to Tobias' suggestion and began to sprint his way back over to Vargas' office, leaving more clouds of dust in his wake. Tobias would have done the same, if it wasn't for his damaged leg, forcing him to limp along to the door, once he had grabbed his empty pistol and placed it back in his holster, since both his hands were already full.

As he was limping, he noticed Ivan beginning to flail in exhaustion, and it looked as if he fell over when he finally burst through the door to the office; to be expected, given his weight.

By the time Tobias had got back to the office, he saw something he was hoping he wouldn't see. He was _seriously_ hoping he wouldn't see it.

"Checkmate, amigo!" Vargas yelled at him, as he was using the shiny-faced Ivan as a human shield, his collar in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun pointed at his head in another. "Now, here's how it's gonna down... you sit tight and wait for the polícia, and I won't have to blow la idiota racista Russo's head into chunks of bloody dog food!"

Tobias could only stand in a crooked stance still, but nonetheless tried his best to look ready, aiming both the stun gun and the submachine gun at Vargas. Even though he'd just told Ivan, in no uncertain terms, that he didn't really like him that much, he couldn't risk him getting killed, since he was such a good friend and important asset of Vitali's. His arse was on the line as much as Ivan's.

"Fuck's sakes, mate, you gonna speak English or Portuguese?! Make up yer fuckin' mind!" Tobias heckled, perhaps trying to goad him into exposing his head more.

"Brazilians speak Portuguese?! I-I thought they spoke Spanish!" Ivan managed to splutter out, perhaps trying to lighten up his situation. Not that he was joking.

"Cale a boca!" Vargas bellowed out in response. "You do not judge me! I know your type, with your 'apples and pears', and your fuckin' 'berkeley hunts'! Fucking gibberish! Hopefully when you're in prison, they'll teach you proper English when you're not getting made to be someone's cadela! Hahahahagh!"

"The bloody 'ell's a 'cadela'?"

Before Vargas could answer that question in some fashion, however, he was rendered silent by means of his mouth, vocal chord, throat, tongue and everything else necessary for talking was suddenly reduced to a chunky red paste, along with the rest of his head. Courtesy of a loud shotgun blast from the other side of the entrance door, right next to Vargas and Ivan, the bits of flesh, skull, brains and an eyeball were soon covering the floor next to him, decorated with blood and shattered glass. Meanwhile, as the rest of Vargas' body fell over, he took the still-breathing Ivan with him to the floor, too exhausted and disoriented to release him from the now-cold grip of the Pound owner.

As Tobias slowly lowered his weapons and Ivan got up to his feet, grunting, the door, reduced to a wooden frame that swings back and forth with some bits of broken glass attached to it, was kicked open. In stepped Juri Karamazov the sharp-dressed wrestling champ, no worse for wear, and holding a giant semi-automatic Assault Shotgun, still smoking from that blast he made.

"Agh... **Juri! W-what the **_**fuck**_** was that, man?!**" Ivan asked.

"I shot the bad guy." He replied in a deep voice, his accent even stronger than any of the other Russians Tobias had interacted with lately.

"What?! Well... really, I thought we were the bad guys! No, you two, you're the bad guys, I'm the grey guy, the morally ambiguous guy!" Ivan began thoughtlessly rattling off. "W...w-why the fuck am I even saying this, Juri, you... auuuugggghhh, you got... blood and shit all over my fuckin' suit!" He lamented, his priorities skewed, as he began delicately trying to flick off a bit of skull on his shoulder.

"Woulda gotten blood an' shit on it either way, mate." Tobias pointed out.

"Oh, shut up! You two, you do not realised that now we're even more fucked than we were before! I didn't even think it was possible! Shit, as if Trevor and Jaroslavich wasn't enough, with Vargas' head decorating this office, and a whole squad of pigs on permanent vacation outside, we're gonna have the fuckin' Po-Po on our case, too! And I have a reckless meathead jock and an _asshole_ psychopath to help me! And just to add insult to injury, I've been forced to leave my car behind, and my suit is _**ruined!**_ Great, just... **fuckin' _grrrrrrrrrrrreat!_** Just when I though it couldn't get worse, it gets fuckin' worse, don't it?! What is up my fuckin' luck?! W-was I Stalin in a past life or some crazy shit like that?!"

"Don't take this personally, mate." Tobias finally interrupted him as he raised his stolen Stun Gun and sent a jolt of electricity into the panicking, ranting, mood-swinging wreck of a man in front of him. Sure enough, this made him start wriggling about on the floor, the only thing coming out of his mouth being "**Hhnnnnnggggnnnrrrrgggrgrhhnnnth!**" and similar noises.

"Let's go, Juri." Tobias requested of the big guy, as he heard the police sirens getting louder. Limping along with his borrowed weapons, he pushed the door out of his way as he walked out into the sun once again, now back on the other side of the boom barrier and out into the street, at long last. Looking back to see Juri behind him, with the incapacitated Ivan slung over his shoulder. As he limped across the street, he noticed a Police Transporter Van parked in front of his Feltzer. As he limped even closer, he noticed a dead police officer sticking out the back doors of the van, the remains of his head wedged in between the doors, a large chunk of it smeared around the edges.

"The fuck 'appened to this copper?" Tobias questioned Juri, who was now making his way back to his Zion in front of the Transporter.

"Politsiya think they restrain me. They learn hard way, they cannot restrain Juri Karamazov." He answered as he tossed Ivan in the back seat of his car.

Tobias imitated his actions somewhat, opening up his Feltzer's driver door and tossing his borrowed weapons into the passenger seat. As he prepared to get in, he shouted out to Juri "Oi, mate, when Ivan gets 'is brain back, remind 'im to look up a Ronald Jakowski. Ronald. Jakowski. Remember that."

Juri simply nodded in response as he got into his car and drove off down the road like a maniac, leaving smoke and tire tracks at his parking space, possibly in an attempt to divert the police's attention from Tobias as he went his about his task. Tobias followed suit, carefully sliding himself into his driver's seat and slamming the door shut, starting the car and doing a quick U-turn, before he began to fiddle about with his SatNav, setting himself a course for Sandy Shores.

Soon afterward, the bright red line made its appearance, and Tobias fiddled about with the on-board tech some more, setting up a wireless link to his phone so he could make a quick, convenient call to his boss.

"Vy dostigli Vitali Rascalov. Pozhaluysta, pozvonite mne, kogda ya ne zanyat uluchsheniya mirovoy ekonomiki." the recorded voice of Vitali spoke up on speaker phone as soon as the ten-second dialing time limit was up.

"Vitali, mate. It's Tobias. Trevor Phillips is in Sandy Shores. I'm on my way there now. I'll be back when he's dead, and I'll 'ave the emerald. Of this I assure yer."


End file.
